Je cherche une boulangerie - Vol. 1

I've recently decided to take up the ambitious task of teaching myself to bake. Save brownies in Italy and some heavy, heavy, heavy wheat bread my mom had me make as a kid, I've never had much success at baking (I imagine my kneading technique needs a lot of work too). But I'm prepared to sacrifice innumerable lumps of dough on the altar of progress to be able to make a good baguette. I was spoiled by our month in Paris and the boulangerie just up the street, and the one around the corner, and that other one...you get the idea.

I purchased a couple books off amazon ( now that's something I'm good at) and the first one I'm going to try is Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day (see page 49 for his classic French bread recipe).

As you can see from the pictures below, my first attempt was far from successful. One of his instructions is to "cover the shaped dough loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight, away from anything that might fall on it or restrict it from growing.". I did this and the shapes ended up expanding flat, so next time I'll have to get a towel and use it to direct the bread's growth without restricting it.

The other part of the recipe I had difficulty with was shaping the loaf without degassing it. It looks like I still got asymmetrical air bubbles, which means I didn't completely overwork the dough, but the loaves obviously need to be tighter.

Oh well, butter and sel gris hide a multitude of sins so the bread was good while it was still warm. Not bad for a first attempt.

- jmb