Baguettes With Air

'Tis the third day of Chinese New Year and I am still at my grampa's place. While it's a nice place to be, I am a little worried for my productivity level since I don't actually have an oven here and I don't have to cook anything. I don't have to clean the house or worry about homework. So what do I actually do ? This is what a typical - wait, who am I kidding - this is what I do here on a daily basis:

1. Wake up around 6.30am. Eat a couple of cookies and some fruit and a cup of tea before heading off for a jog around the neighbourhood. With the exception of today, where I woke up an hour later and watched some tv before dragging my butt outside to run. 

2. Shower and do some laundry before eating some lunch.

3. Visit some relatives and play cards with my cousins. Apparently I suck at any card game so I gave up after the twentieth round. Then it's onto monopoly before everyone mooches around until dinner time. Or maybe I'll get sleepy and sneak in a nap.

4. After a long and heavy dinner(there is a ridiculous amount of dishes on the table at this time of year), it's back to either cards or board games or more mooching around before bedtime. 

With all that eating and mooching around, I think I'm beginning to turn into a potato of sorts. You know, the potato of the sits-on-the-couch-and-watches-telly-all-day fame. Give me a few more days and I am afraid I will resemble these baguettes:

Which really don't resemble baguettes at all. More like brown elongated tortoises without legs or something.

But they aren't just any baguettes. They're hole-y baguettes ! Please excuse the lame pun.

To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of bread. I think I've mentioned that before. I prefer my carbs from other sources, ie, potatoes. I love potatoes in any form, boiled and mashed or steamed and tossed with mayo or fried or roasted or baked with a mountain of cheese. Compared to the potato, bread just seems... Meh. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I am beginning to turn into one.

But my dad on the other hand, can't get enough of bread. And since he's begun to make requests for 'lighter' bread, I was happy to oblige. Unfortunately I just discovered that his definition of lighter meant fluffy bread, and the ones he had in mind were brioche buns. Which, once you've made them, you'll know isn't actually that light. At least not in the healthy sense.

I figured baguettes with air seemed like a good thing to bake. I mean, it doesn't get any lighter than that. No butter ? Air ? They do take a few days to make, but it isn't actually much work. The bread takes that long because it has to sit and ferment in the fridge. If you've never made sourdough before, it might seem a little weird to have a bowl of ever-inflating dough sitting beside the jars of jam and blocks of butter in your refrigerator. But when you pull it out, shape it and bake it off, you'll be rewarded with that bread-in-the-oven scent that is not unlike those bakeries that you can't pass without buying a croissant or two or five. Or maybe it's just me.

Even the smell of the fermented dough is lovely. It's sour-ish but not in an unpleasant way, kind of like how yogurt is tangy but in a good way. Or like how the best cheeses smell. That being said, sourdough bread isn't sour. It tastes like.. Really good bread. And really good bread takes like what, four ingredients ? And it isn't even hard to make. Sure, it takes more folding and shaping than most but even those aren't difficult. And if you make them for the bread monster in your house, they'll love you more for it. 

Slice and serve with liberal amounts of butter (what my dad does). Or let stale and make French toast/bread pudding (what I do).

Baguettes with Air

Recipe taken and adapted from this site here.

Makes 4 baguettes.

1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

450g warm water

3/4 tsp sea salt

567g bread flour, plus more to dust 

1 tbsp olive oil, plus more for greasing

1. Mix the yeast with a little of the warm water and let sit for five minutes to activate it. 

2. Add the rest of the water, salt and flour, then mix until it forms a rough dough. Let it rest in the bowl for 5 minutes. Mix in the oil, working the dough for about a minute. It should be smooth and pliable.

3. Put the dough in another oiled bowl. Leave to rest for 10 minutes. Put the dough on an oiled surface and gently stretch it into a square. Divide the dough visually into thirds. Then fold the top third over the middle, then fold the bottom third over, like a you would a letter. Divide it visually into thirds again, then fold the left third over the middle, then the right third over the, like a letter. This is one stretch and fold treatment. Put the dough back in the bowl, seam side down. Let rest for 10 minutes.

4. Repeat the stretch and fold process three more times for a total of 4 stretch and fold treatments, letting the dough rest for 10 minutes in between treatments. Cover the bowler the plastic wrap and leave to ferment for at least 2 days and up to 4 days in the fridge (I followed the author and took it out after 3 days).

5. Let the dough come to room temperature for 3 hours. Tip it out carefully onto an oiled surface. At this stage it should smell like sourdough - delightful. Cut the dough into four pieces. Take one piece and carefully stretch it into a rectangle. Fold the rectangle into thirds like for the stretch and fold treatment, like you would fold a letter or croissant dough. Place it seam side down on some lightly oiled parchment paper. Repeat with the other three pieces of dough. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest 1 hour.

6. Gently stretch each piece and fold into thirds again, cover and leave them to rest for 1 hour. Repeat the process one more time, then cover and let rest while you preheat the oven to 250C, around 20 minutes. Lightly dust the dough with flour, then pick up of piece and gently drag into a long baguette while twisting it a little. Place the pieces on greased baking sheets. Put them in the oven and throw in 1/2 cup of water on the bottom of the oven. Quickly shut the door so the steam doesn't escape - it's an important part in the texture of the baked breads.

7. Bake the baguettes for 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 230C, bake for another 10-15 minutes until the bottoms sound hollow when tapped and the breads are golden brown. Remove them from the trays and cool them on a baking rack.