Peter Reinhart’s baguettes | Bewitching Kitchen

These days the the wonderful aroma of bread is wafting through the Bewitching Kitchen … For those who don’t know about “The BBA Challenge“, a few months ago Nicole, of “Pinch My Salt“, decided to bake every bread from Peter Reinhart’s book “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice“, and sent out a virtual invitation to anyone interested in joining her. It involves forty-three breads in all, made in the order that they appear in the book. Over two hundred people accepted the challenge, including me. It’s been a ton of fun so far, with ups and downs, successes and failures.

Here we are, at recipe number 26: Poolish Baguettes

Poolish is a soft mixture of flour, water and yeast that ferments overnight (or longer) and then gets incorporated into a bread dough. In this recipe, the dough contains both white and whole wheat flour, but the whole wheat is first sifted to remove some of the bran. It’s an interesting method, and here’s all the bran left behind after sifting a few ounces of flour:

Reinhart’s recipe calls for kneading the dough. I prefer folding instead of kneading, so that’s what I did: 3 folding cycles during the initial 2 hours of fermentation. After cutting the dough into three pieces, I shaped each one as a baguette. After two more hours rising, the baguettes were slashed with sharp razor blade, and placed in the oven.

Notice how bubbly the dough was…

Even though my slashing skills still need improvement, this time my shaping wasn’t too bad. There are many online videos showing how to shape a baguette; maybe one day if I get really good at it… I’ll post my own 😉

In the meantime, you can watch a particularly instructive video here….

These baguettes were delicious! I’d probably reduce the proportion of whole wheat in the dough, but this recipe is already a winner for me and my husband.

Among the breads in Peter Reinhart’s book, I put this one in my “top-five-list”! Having lived in Paris for several years, I always crave the amazing baguettes that we found in every corner of the city…

The recipe for “Pain a l’ancienne” is deceptively simple: flour, water, salt and yeast, followed by a brief kneading, and then into the fridge for several hours. But, if making the dough is easy and simple, shaping the bread is another story! This is a high hydration dough, that must be gently handled. It takes an expert baker to balance the gentleness and assertiveness needed to coax such a soft dough into the correct baguette shape. Maybe you can get an idea of how tricky it is from the photos…

This is the dough after spending the night in the fridge. Next morning it will slowly “wake up” at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours (mine took about 3 hours and 15 minutes to double in size).

Once it doubles, gently “pour” it out of the bowl, open it in a rectangle, and cut the dough in three “bread-like” pieces (the full recipe makes 6 baguettes, I made a half-recipe). Then they will be slightly stretched and placed in a very hot oven.

I need more practice with shaping baguettes, and not to mention the “slashing”. I didn’t slash two of them, and only practiced my skills with the blade on the third. Indeed, need more practice is a kind way to put it 😉

My baguettes had a “boat shape”, both ends rising up, which, according to Susan, from Wild Yeast, it means the oven was too hot. Note to self: bake at 475F instead of 490F next time!

But, even if they weren’t the best looking baguettes, the crumb and the crust were just the way we like them; they were delicious!

With this bread, we arrive at the midpoint of the “Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge“! Lots of great breads ahead, but I am starting to feel a bit nostalgic. It’s a lot of fun to “bake a book” like this, with so many other bakers doing the same. I’ll be a little sad when it’s over, but, for the time being, check out some other bakers’ pain a l’ancienne

Carolyn of Two Skinny Jenkins

Joelen, of “What’s Cookin’, Chicago?”

Oggi, of “I Can Do That”

Mags, from “The Other Side of Fifty”

Paul, from “Yumarama’s Artisan Bread”

Txfarmer from her gorgeous Chinese blog…