Baguette


I could do this in my sleep.

1 + 1/4  cup cold water
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
flour added to a wet dough, about 2 +1/2 cups 


new bowl


I fell asleep.
And then woke up.
The oven is set to high as it will go.






It proofs in there while the oven heats up. Not long. 15 minutes at most. It could go longer.

In the oven, spritzed with water to produce steam for the first ten minutes. Not through the door, but rather through the oven's chimney that exits through a back  burner. Not all stoves do that, but low end stoves like mine do. Wet dough, kept wet at high heat until the bubbles inside can heat and expand and the skin kept elastic to stretch, and then the stretching and steaming stops and the crust quickly crisps.


Edit:  Man, was this text ever messed up all over the place. Apparently I wrote it in my sleep.  Sorry. 

4 comments:

Synova said...

You put the plastic keep-it-wet box in the hot oven?

(I am also assuming yeast was involved.)

Chip Ahoy said...

No, Synova, the proof box would melt. The tray is put in the oven, but the dough could go into a preheated clay cloche instead and then it wouldn't have to be sprayed inside the oven, but that limits it to the size of the cloche.

This is similar to NYT no-knead bread.

Chip Ahoy said...

Bittman errors in the video because he wants to go fast. The whole point is go slowly to allow fermentation because time is what imparts character that plain water/flour/salt lacks. Here's the original.

Synova said...

Ah, thank you. I sort of figured it would melt but then there's stuff like cook-in-the-plastic-bag pot roast which also weirds me out and makes me doubt my grasp on simple physical facts like "plastic melts."

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