Happy Monday everyone! Hope you had a great weekend.
I really love baking bread (a great stress reliever!), but I'm finding it does take heaps of practice. I'm trying to make bread that has a little less white flour, so this weekend I attempted Kamut baguettes. This is the third go, and I'm finally starting to get the hang of it. Kamut flour dough takes a little longer to rise, and is a bit more dense than a white flour bread. This recipe is a mix of Kamut and regular flour. They are not a perfect shape, but they do taste good. For some more info on Kamut, click here.
Kamut Baguettes - makes four small baguettes (so they fit in my oven!)
The night before baking:
150 g all purpose flour
150 ml of warm water
1 teaspoon instant yeast
Mix all of the above together in a medium bowl, then knead for a few minutes. Cover bowl with a towel and let sit for one hour. Punch down dough, then cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.
The next day:
200ml of warm water
1 teaspoon salt
100g of all purpose flour
260g of Kamut flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
Take the refrigerated dough out, and add a little of the 200 ml of warm water to it. This will activate the yeast. Let stand for 10 minutes. In a large bowl, mix together the salt, yeast, all purpose flour, kamut flour, sugar and the remaining warm water. Add the refrigerated yeast mixture and combine. Knead dough for about 5 minutes. Place dough in a bowl with a little oil in it, and roll dough to slightly coat. Let stand for one hour, or until dough doubles in bulk.
Divide dough into 4 equal pieces (mine worked out to about 200g each). At this point, I'll direct you to this site for a little baguette shaping lesson. It's really helpful! We might be here all day if I tried to shoot each step ;) This video is based on a regular flour recipe, so don't let it throw you off. Just be concerned with the shaping and scoring.
Once you've shaped and scored your baguettes, place them on a pan with a little cornmeal on the baking sheet, cover with a clean tea towel, and let stand for another 45 minutes. Bake in a 375f oven for about 23-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Enjoy immediately!
If you have any bread baking tips, feel free to pass them on to me ;) Back on Wednesday!
janis
