How to Bake Demi Baguettes

Transcript

Now I'm going to show you how to bake the demi-baguettes. The demi-baguettes have been proofing for about 45 minutes and I'm just going to take the cover off of them. I'm going to do a quick little test, right like this, and when the dough doesn't spring back like that, to me that means the dough was proofed.

And so for these demi baguettes I'm going to use a wooden pizza peel, and I'm going to dust the surface of the peel with rice flour. The reason that I'm using rice flour is because it's a little more coarse than regular flour, and it doesn't get absorbed into the dough, so it's a great sliding mechanism to use to get the dough into the oven without the dough sticking on the peel.

These are small little breads so I'm just going to use the palm of my hand, and I'm going to take the edge of the cloth, and I'm going to flip them into the palms of my hand upside down, and then I'm going to flip it over right side up. I'm going to do that with the other demi-baguettes.

So once I have these on the peel what I do is I quickly straighten them out with my hands, and then I'm going to score them and I'm going to use my lame. I'm going to do two scores and I'm going to hold the lame at about a 45 degree angle to create the scores. I'm going to hold on to the bread, while I'm scoring.

And now I'm going to take my cup of water and put it into the broiler pan and that does create a nice bit of steam, and now I'm going to load my bread directly onto the pizza peel, and then spritz the bread with more steam. What I'll do is set the timer for five minutes and continue spritzing, within that five minute period of time.

Now I'm going to check on the demi-baguettes. They've been in the oven for 20 to 23 minutes and I'm going to check on them. They're also ready to come out of the oven. They are a great beautiful brown. I'm just going to set them on the counter to cool down and that's how you make demi-baguettes.