Those Baguettes

Been baking 200g baguettes for ever. The French would probably say they aren’t proper baguettes which usually start around 300g but they’re a lot better than the stuff we’ve bought in France in recent years, sad to say.

Now that I’m only baking for the two of us, I’ve settled down to turning them out in fours. From our perspective one 200g baguette is breakfast. I hang them up from a hook in an open-topped freezer bag and they get heated up in a hot oven ready for breakfast. The first one goes straight in, and the others, as they get staler, get the old trick of being shoved under the tap before reheating. Very hot oven, 5-6 minutes.

These days I tend to use a mix of commercial bread flours (Shipton Mill) and home milled. Sieved home milled leaves me plenty of left-over bran which I add to various flour mixes. Never mind the health aspects, what about the flavour?

So in the formula above which conveniently supplies you with the quantities for four loaves (more than that, use the percentages to scale up). But of the 428g of flour I would use 400g + 28g bran for a much improved flavour. No bran? Use wholemeal. I also flour couches, bannetons and baking sheets with wholemeal rye which is good for nuttiness.

My usual method: hand mixed, 10 kneads repeated 3 times with 5 mins rest between each. 4 hours bulk fermentation, stretch and fold at the end of first 3 hours. Roll out the baguettes, flatten them slightly and place in couches floured with wholemeal rye. I improvise couches using tea towels. Prove about 3 hours – they prove faster than loaves. Flatten again very slightly, slash and bake.

In the Pico 300C top and bottom. 10 minutes steam. Probably reduce to 250C top and 220C bottom. About 17 minutes total watching carefully towards the end.