French Baguette-ish

This is pretty key recipe to have if you want to be eating Mediterranean style. Remember when I said there was a lot of conflicting information about the diet, depending on different resources? Wellll... here's one: there are a bunch of websites out there claiming that people in the region eat mainly whole grains and low-fat dairy. Um, no. A variety of different grains, perhaps. Definitely not low-fat dairy. I think my Greek in-laws would be sick if I ever tried to feed them whole grain pasta. And no, they are not the exception. But I digress..

By the way, why would you make baguette when you can pick one up at the store? Well... some days I tend to agree. But I have 3 reasons:

1. It's fresher and therefore tastier.
2. It has absolutely no chemicals in it - most baguettes at our local grocery stores do tend to have preservatives in them.
3. It's wa-a-ay cheaper. We usually pay 3-4 dollars in Quebec for a baguette of a decent size. This recipe is certainly under 50 cents.

The recipe I use for French Baguette from this book here by Rob Wanless:

I don't feel like sesame seeds are part of French Baguette... but I know greeks put them on all of their breads! Hence the term "Baguette-ish."

For the Bread Machine (could easily be adapted for hand mixing):

Run the following ingredients on the dough cycle in this order - wet, dry, make a well in flour, yeast in well:

Ingredients:

1 C water
2 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1 T rye flour
2 t yeast
1 1/2 t quick-rise yeast

After a few minutes you get something like this:

But then it mixes quite a bit more, and actually is a very wet dough. This is normal, and Wanless actually suggests wetting your hands when you will form the dough later on. 

On a pretty heavily floured surface, form the dough into a ball, like this:

What I did next is role it into an oblong shape that was about 4-5" wide, and 1/2" or so thick.

Roll up the dough pretty tightly to make a long baguette shape, sort of like you would a jelly-roll. My ends sort of smushed together on their own, but make sure they seal up, pinching fingers at the ready!

And then I cut it in two, because there was no way that would fit on my baking sheet. They were sprinkled with water before they went on a cornmeal covered baking sheet until they doubled, in my case I preheated my oven after maybe a half an hour, making it about 40 minutes.

There, don't they look comfy underneath that dish towel?

Then, cut 3-4 diagonal 1/4" slits in each baguette so they don't suffocate in that oven! I brushed on egg wash (1 egg yolk + 2 tsp water) and sprinkled with LOTS of sesame seeds.

And this is how they came out of the oven. Wanless says bake on 500° F for 25-30 minutes with a pan of hot water underneath, until well cooked. Here's the thing. This is time number two I make this bread. The first time it came out black. Deliciously popcorn-like, but black. This time, I ended up pulling it out after 20 minutes. As you can see still dark, but not over-done.

Tonight, I enjoyed my bread with some pasta al'arrabiata and a nice glass of Little Penguin Merlot:

Ok, but seriously though, that piece of bread is huge. In reality, I ripped the baguette in half for the picture, but then I only ate half of the half... Let's get serious people, this is a blog about weight loss!