Janedo's blog

Hello! How about a bit of french pastry?

Anyone who knows me from back when, knows that one of my goals as a home baker in France was to make a great baguette. I went through a series of trials and found that the technique used by Anis Bouabsa gave great results. French bakery baguettes, much like the photos you can see in Calvel's book, are pretty much basic French baguettes and in my opnion, not that fabulous. The BEST baguette in France is either called baguette "Tradition" or a house name, such as Baguette "Catalane".

Hi all! I've been one busy person what with the holidays, kids, etc. But now life is settling into a more calm and regular rhythm. So, I'm BACK!

Over the holidays, Steve from Breadcetera, and I did a flour swap (yes, it cost a fortune!). We sent each other dried samples of our starter and flour. I sent him some organic stone-ground T55 and T65 and he sent me some KA AP and bread flour. Not so much because he himself uses that particular flour, but he figured it would give me an idea of the type of flour many people bake with.

I make several different versions of this very famous cake as it is probably my very favorite of all chocolate desserts and perfect for a fancy presentation. The only thing that may cause problems is finding the ingredients in the States. I don’t know what’s available over there, so I’ll do my best to describe how it’s done here.
For Sean’s birthday we had a very nice dinner of marinated, then BBQ’s duck breasts, a zucchini – chèvre tian and sautéed potatoes. I decorated his cake with maltezer’s and white and dark chocolate Mikado’s and 4 sparklers.

I made Anis's baguettes and they came out rather nicely. I was very happy o finally get a good result. But, see, I don't really like yeast bread. Other than sweet doughs, I don't really see the point. So, right away, I decided to take the basic recipe and the techniques and see how a sourdough version would come out. I tried pure sourdough and maintain my dislike. The crumb is just too chewy for my taste. So, the next step was to try it with a touch of yeast. The result was perfect to my liking!

Tuesday morning, we decided to go visit the Duc de la Chapelle, Anis Bouabsa's bakery in Paris. As you probably know, he won this year's Best Baguette. The bakery is situated in a modest neighborhood, far from the typical tourist traps and chic areas. We entered the bakery and asked he woman behind the counter several questions before buying a selection of breads. She was very nice and helpful. As we left the bakery, we took some pictures of the young baker/apprenti who was scoring baguettes and sliding them in to the oven.

Well, I haven't been around much lately, just too busy! But yesterday I decided to read the directions VERY carefully and try the Acme rustic baguettes once again. Howard's looked so great, I figured I should try again respecting every single step because I didn't last time.

What makes a great baguette? Well, first of all, what's a baguette? It's a post-war, "we're sick of tough pain au levain, we want what the American's have", loaf of very light, white bread. It's made with yeast, very white flour that is very often, believe it or not, a mix of French soft and American hard wheat. Most French bakeries "cheat" and use white flour with stuff in it like ascorbic acid which produces an even light loaf. The baguette "tradition" is the no-cheat version, made with only flour, water, yeast and salt, no additives.

I don't really know what to call this bread. It is mostly based on the method of Nury's Light Rye. I made that one a couple of times and found it very good, but I wanted a bread with more rye and that had nice big holes but was a bit higher, blown up. I decided to modify the ingredients a bit and then go for a dough that was just slightly more compact. Not a normal bread dough that forms a ball, but not as hydrated. I also proofed it in a banneton for a couple of hours straight out of the fridge. These modifications produced this bread here:

baguette farcie