Frenchies

Lee kneading his first ever bread dough.

Voila! Could be a little bit crunchier on the crust.

A rare "raw milk" cheese - we buy at the Wedge.
Very good.

On our baguette....

I've been sayin' I wanted to try to bake our own French baguette ever since I became addicted to them in France. I even said once that I wanted to try to make croissant, but then I came to my senses. If baguette takes time and patience, I can't even imagine what a croissant takes. Sainthood?

So, we had this lovely rainy day here in Minneapolis and Lee and I rolled up our sleeves and got to work making our first ever loaf of bread together.

So here's the deal as far as I can tell. The dough is easy! Yeast, water, flour and salt. That is, by law, all that can be in a French baguette and we wanted to do the "legal" baguette! So no sugar or oil for us!

It was fast and easy and I loved that my recipe didn't call for a large tool, as in mixer with a dough paddle because I don't have one. This recipe called for a fork. My kind of back to basics cooking.

So we did it. Let it rise three different times which Lee thought was pretty crazy. But I know that's just how bread is. In the end, they looked pretty good - not perfect. But pretty good. And the flavor was good, but the crust could have been more crisp and the inside could have been lighter, less dense. It was like a very good piece of fresh white bread.

Used a nice organic white flour and then water and yeast and salt...well...hard to go wrong there.

We have a hunch that we'll turn on the convection next time as the browning was a bit uneven. And we'll probably let it rise a bit more before we pop it into the oven, even though we were over the time already. Just a super dry day here in my apartment!

It was fun to do something new and quite yummy to eat it with butter running down your chin! And the whole thing was kind of sensual!

Bon apetit!