Hoosier Daddy
Membership Revoked
Once you have an established recipe for a basic bread, you can start varying the ingredients for different tastes and textures.
For this offering, I used my standard recipe (found in Great Bread thread) and modified it to produce a crispier crust and more baguette-like texture.
Bakery Baguettes are baked with high pressure steam for the first ten minutes or so. That is what gives them that super flaky crust. It is near impossible to duplicate that in the home oven.
Some peole have moderate success with spraying water on the loaves or putting a pan of water in the bottom of the oven. Either way works okay, but the final texture is not quite the same.
The idea with baguettes is to have as light of a dough as possible, and as little oil as possible
Here is what I did, and it actually came pretty close to Bakery Bread.
I added a cup of powdered milk to the wet ingred. beore adding more flour.
This allowed me to reduce the total flour by a cup or so.
I added a little more Kosher salt for flavor.
I placed the dough in the oven and allowed it to bake for about 5 minutes to set the crust.
I then brushed the loaves with water and sprinkled then generously with crushed saltine crackers. (That is the crumbly stuff you see in the image.)
Baked for another fifteen minutes or so, unitl the loaves were golden and removed from oven.
Within two minutes I was enjoying a fresh slice slathered in butter.
The point is when you have a standard white bread recipe, don't be afraid to experiment.
For this offering, I used my standard recipe (found in Great Bread thread) and modified it to produce a crispier crust and more baguette-like texture.
Bakery Baguettes are baked with high pressure steam for the first ten minutes or so. That is what gives them that super flaky crust. It is near impossible to duplicate that in the home oven.
Some peole have moderate success with spraying water on the loaves or putting a pan of water in the bottom of the oven. Either way works okay, but the final texture is not quite the same.
The idea with baguettes is to have as light of a dough as possible, and as little oil as possible
Here is what I did, and it actually came pretty close to Bakery Bread.
I added a cup of powdered milk to the wet ingred. beore adding more flour.
This allowed me to reduce the total flour by a cup or so.
I added a little more Kosher salt for flavor.
I placed the dough in the oven and allowed it to bake for about 5 minutes to set the crust.
I then brushed the loaves with water and sprinkled then generously with crushed saltine crackers. (That is the crumbly stuff you see in the image.)
Baked for another fifteen minutes or so, unitl the loaves were golden and removed from oven.
Within two minutes I was enjoying a fresh slice slathered in butter.
The point is when you have a standard white bread recipe, don't be afraid to experiment.
