Week three - Paul Hollywood's baguettes

Week three already!  Hand made bread is a nemesis of mine. We make our own bread, but always in the bread machine, which removes the hard work of kneading!  So I was thankful when I downloaded this week's recipe (http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/paul_hollywoods_55351) to find it suggested to use a mixer with a dough hook. Hurrah!

So once the dough was ready I popped it in an oiled plastic container. I didn't have a square one so I used a tall rectangular one, like those used to hold breakfast cereals, and left it to rise. The plastic box worked really well, so I might use that method again.

Next I carefully removed the dough from the container and gently divided it into four pieces. The dough was still quite wet and sticky so this part was quite tricky. I had to roll the dough into baguette shapes and then place them into a couche. A couche being a sheet of linen traditionally used to keep the dough in a baguette shape during the second prove. I, surprisingly, don't own a couche so instead I substituted a tea towel for this purpose. It worked quite well, until I had to remove the dough!  Perhaps I hadn't used enough flour on the teatowel but the dough got a little bit stuck...anyway my three-year old son also wanted to make a baguette. You can see how sticky the dough was from this photo. 

Once I'd persuaded the dough and the teatowel to part ways, the baguettes were placed on a baking tray, lightly floured and then slashed. Baked in the oven for 20-25 minutes and here we are:

They're very 'rustic' looking!  The smallest one was actually made from the dough that my son was playing with, I'm surprised how well it turned out!

See you next week for desserts.