L'Éternelle Baguette

The best baguette I’ve ever had was by no surprise, one I had in Paris. It’s all true what people say about their bread it’s not just bread, it’s art. For years I’ve dreamed of finding a baguette that came close to the ones I had from a little shop in the Maris Arrondissement;  soft and airy on the outside and crunchy and yet at the same time chewy on the outside. The closest  duplication I could find are the ones from Acme bakery in The San Francisco Bay Area. I was determined to steal their recipe and tracked down a relatively similar guide. Unfortunately, that recipe  took two days to make, clocking in at about about 16 hours! After making that baguette I thought that it was pretty damn good but there’s no way I’m going to waste two days of my precious life making it again. The solution, spend one day making the long version which gave me three loafs and then using the third load as a starter for the next baguette. This will save you three hours! By the time you repeat this technique: make the dough, put some aside and use it to make the next round, by the 5th time the baguette is so perfect you won’t believe it’s coming out of your kitchen instead of a boulanger in Paris!

Prep Time: First time around, 8 hours 30 minutes. After that, 1 hour 25 minutes! And 4 hours to keep them coming.

Ingredients:

Organic all purpose flour. Use the best flour you can find, it does make a difference!

Two jars with lids 

Active dry yeast

Warm water

Salt

Sugar

2 Jars with lids

Spray bottle

Cookie sheet or pizza stone

Instructions

1   In bowl mix 1 tablespoon yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1/2 cup of warm water. Let sit until foamy yeast water.

2 Remove 1 tablespoon of yeast water from bowl and put in jar #1

3 Remove 1 tablespoon of yeast water from bowl and put in jar #2  (this is for future baguettes).

4 In bowl,  add 3/4 cup of flour and teaspoon of salt this is going to be called your old dough.

5 In each jar, mix 1 cup of flour with 2/3 cup of warm water, cover jars with lid. These a called your poolish or starters.

6  Place Jar #1 in warm place. Store jar #2 in fridge for however long you want until you are ready to make another baguette. The longer the poolish sits, the more complex the flavor (but don’t let it sit around and get moldy, that’s too much character).

7 Knead your old dough for 5 minutes, added flour only to keep it from sticking to your hand.

8 Put old dough in a warm place and cover.

9 Let old dough and one of the poolish jars  sit  and rise  for around for 3 hours.

10 After three hours, mix  poolish with 3/4 cup of hot water 

11 Break up old dough

12  Mix 2 1/4 cup of flour, 1 tablespoon of yeast, poolish, 2 teaspoon of salt,  1 tablespoon of sugar, and old dough

13 Knead for 10 minutes. Should look like oblex when stretched

14 Put dough in a bowl and cover bowel with a damp towel and rise in warm place 3 hours. For the first hour, every 20 minutes, lift some dough from the bottom of the ball and fold it over the top as if you were putting the dough to bed and pulling a blanket over it.

15 Cut  dough into into 3 parts. 

16 Fold corners into the centers, turn upside down and push dough around with your palms until it forms balls.

17 Put two dough balls (we’ll call them dough balls #2, and #3) in Tupperware and place in fridge. #1 will be used to make today’s baguette,  #2 can be used for another baguette if you cover it for about an hour to warm up. #3 will be used as old dough to keep future baguettes coming.

18 Cover and  let the  today’s (#1) baguette dough ball rise for 30 min (longer if you took it out of fridge)

19 Pat down

21 Flatten shapes  into long rectangles using your palms

22 Fold top end into the center long ways. Use your palm to seal the center line.

23 Rotate and fold in half long ways and flatten the ends with your palm to seal.

24 Using your finger tips and thumbs ( not your palms!) roll the shapes into a baguette shape that will fit in your largest cookie sheet or pizza stone (if you make it too skinny, your gonna make bread sticks). Put the dough on parchment paper or thin wood slabs. This will be used for you to roll the dough onto the oven.

25 Cover and let dough rise for 30 min while you preheat the  oven to 450°.

26 Put a  cookie sheet or pizza stone in the oven and let it heat up.

27 Uncover dough and cut 45° slits in it. 

28 Transfer dough to the oven and spray dough and sheet or stone with water.

Bake for 15 minutes and then spray baguette again. Bake for 10 more  minutes, or until  golden brown. Remove them from the oven and cool them on a rack.

For Future Baguette…

The next time you make a baguette, take dough ball  #2 out of fridge, follow steps 18 to 28.

For Eternal Baguettes…

 Take the jar of poolish and dough ball #3 and follow steps to 9 to 28.  Remember to always save extra dough balls just to use as old dough and you can keep this going forever as long as you replenish the poolish  when it runs out. The more you keep using the old dough to make future loafs, the flavor will get better and the inside fluffier