Every once in a while I’ll put together a batch of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Usually when I do that, I will then go on to make a few batches in succession, and then the interest wanes. In fact, the last time I had the bucket going, Zander specifically told me that this style of bread was not his preference. So I finished up the dough I had going and didn’t make it for a while.
Enter Christmas. Mom gave me a spectacular pan specifically for making baguette style loaves of bread. It looks similar to this one on Amazon. I knew the instant I saw it that I was going to whip up a batch of the Artisan bread to try out in this pan. But first, I needed to make room in my fridge for the dough bucket. So I purposed to use up leftovers for a while, emptied out a few jam and salsa jars and finally had some room.
The timing couldn’t have been better. One of the things that Abigail is doing for school this year is cooking. Once a week she is going to cook a recipe from a cookbook. The first book I chose for her was Everyday Italian by Giada De Laurentiis, and the first recipe she made was for the simple marinara sauce. She then had to choose three other recipes that she wanted to make from the book. One was a ravioli recipe, which she wants to adapt from squash filling to cheese, so I’m looking for a different recipe for her. But one of the other recipes was for an Italian Egg Sandwich. Basically it is slices of a hearty artisan style bread topped with the already made marinara, Parmesan cheese and a fresh fried egg. I pulled out my perforated pan and stretched out two knobs of dough to fit in it.
The first trial didn’t go so well. I used too much dough and basically had one oddly shaped loaf in the end, as the dough rose over the middle hump of the pan and connected the two batards of dough. The Italian Egg Sandwiches were still delicious, but I clearly had some work to do on the quantity of dough. I should also note that the baguette pan is awesome! It is completely non-stick and I didn’t use a drop of any kind of fat when putting the dough in the pan. The perforations are also perfect for letting steam in through the bottom of the pan, so you end up with a uniform crispness the whole length of the bread. Zander suddenly has changed his tune about not preferring the artisan bread.
So today I decided to bake up the remaining dough into baguettes to go with a taco soup dinner. I eyeballed half of the dough, pulled it out, stretched it out, and prepped it for baking. I think I figured out the right proportions, what do you think?
Zander was very excited to see these two perfect baguettes come out of the oven. When I asked him if he would be willing to eat some with a bowl of soup, he quickly acquiesced. I think we’re all looking forward to dinner tonight.