Baguette or not baguette that is the question..

I have never managed to produce the baguette of my heart’s desire. I produce baguettes with tasty chewy crusts with the sort of holes that are representative of what sourdough gets up to in a hot oven.  What I want are baguettes with a brittle crust, that make me think I am in France. What’s the secret?

I made a few of these  earlier in the week with Mick’s Pain de Campagne dough. Sometimes I feel as if I go round in circles with this bread baking lark. In the meantime, apricot jam on fresh baguette is still pretty tasty!

Soup Construction

  • Tomato stock – from roasting tomatoes and garden herbs for passata
  • Chicken stock – from roasting chickens
  • Leek thinnings – from transplanting leeks
  • and a couple of big leeks
  • Sticks of celery – found in fridge
  • Carrots – ditto
  • Spinach – leftover from Ottolenghi chickpea and butternut squash dish
  • A handful of Cooked chickpeas – ditto
  • End of parmesan, grated

Sweat leeks, carrots and celery in a little good olive oil and butter, add stocks, throw in the chickpeas and spinach and sprinkle with parmesan.

Toast from strange sourdough that started out as being for pizza, (made with some of the tomato stock as above) but owing to major mistaken identity moment turned into this:-

Smile even though you have messed up!

Surprisingly baked up to make this:-

Look at you guys!

Close up:-

Not bad!

For the curious: the crumb shot!

Don’t you just love it when the dough forgives you?

On the Landing

Take the sheets off the bed and leave them at the top of the stairs while you strip the rest of the beds and come back to find a poodle snuggled down in the sunshine for a quick forty winks.

It’s a dog’s life.