Short Baguette

Baguette is one of the most difficult breads to make and ongoing practice is a must for beginners like me.

My oven is a small one which can’t handle the usual length of 65 cm, so I am going to make a short Baguette instead.

Short Baguette recipe:

The recipe I’m using will utilise the Poolish method with the following ingredients.

Ingredients	Grams/ml	Baker’s %
Poolish
Bread flour	150	94%
Whole-wheat flour	10	6%
Water	160	100%
Instant yeast	0.5	0.3%
Main dough
Bread flour	310	66%
Instant yeast	2.5	0.5%
Salt	9.5	2%
Diastatic malt powder	2.5	0.5%
Water	160	34%
Poolish	320	–

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Preparation

Poolish

• Combine the poolish ingredients and let it ferment at room temperature for 15 hours (I made it the night before!)

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Main Dough

1. Mix all the ingredients
2. Put the wet dough into an oiled storage box and let it autolyse for 30 minutes (This will ease the subsequent kneading works)
3. With highly hydrated dough like this used for Baguette, I will use the “Stretch and Fold” method to build the required dough structure instead of the traditional kneading
4. Let the folded dough to rest for 20 minutes
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for four to six times
6. Divide the dough into 3 pieces and shape them into balls
7. Cover the dough and do a bench rest of 5 minutes
8. Shape the dough into three short baguette and leave them for a final proof of 60 minutes or until double in size
9. Score the dough before going into the oven

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Baking

Pre-heat the oven to 240°C and lower the temperature to 230°C right after putting the dough inside the oven.

Bake for 20 minutes.

I should have a much deeper cut in the scoring work. The Baguette surface is not up to standard. 😫

The crum seems to be a little bit tight and not so airy!

Still there is plenty of room for improvement. 😀😀 💪💪