ALMOST NO KNEAD BAGUETTE, and some ROMESCO TOO!

The perfect baguette? Elusive as ever, but this one was very near. The best I’ve ever made, and the most satisfying in many ways. Have made a French loaf earlier, Julia Child’s French Loaf, which had me huffing and puffing for days to end, with an 18 page long set of instructions! But by the time I was ready to bake the bread, it was all well worth the effort. That was a Daring Bakers challenge way back in Feb ’08, my second challenge, which had me scribbling plenty, making notes, charts. Then I seemed to have all the time in the world!

Cut to now. No time for so many complicated risings unless the gun’s on the temple. The recipe on the King Arthur blog came as a revelation. Beautiful bread and with minimum effort. I don’t have a dough hook (actually I do but choose not to use it due to power outages), so I used elbow grease. It turned out to be a crisp and lovely baguette. The good part is that the dough is made the previous evening, and just needs the second rising the next morning…

Next morning, the family woke up to the sweet smells of baking bread. I have never had that experience before. When I was young, we never baked bread at home. It was unheard of. Baking was limited to the odd chocolate cake, or then, my Mum’s fave, the Christmas cake. That morning smelt wonderful, like a bakery & the baguettes were gone almost all gone in next to no time. All I eventually had left were a few heels and a couple of slices left. (I made a half portion of the dough, which yielded 2 baguettes.)

A baguette is a specific shape of bread, commonly made from basic lean dough, a simple guideline set down by French law, distinguishable by its length, very crisp crust, and slits cut into it to enable proper expansion of gasses and thus formation of the crumb.

Baguettes redux: Easy Baguettes from an almost-no-knead dough
Please go to this link at King Arthur blog for the recipe. I am not posting it here because I won’t be able to do justice to it. The post talks to you, then it sings to you…and eventually hypnotizes you to reach for flour!! PJH has a wonderful style of writing & the tutorial is a must see.

To quote from the post…Can you make baguettes as tasty and gorgeous as those from a bakery using previously frozen loaves, filled with chemicals, distributed from a commissary a thousand miles away from the bakery?
Or baguettes equal to the soft bread wands labeled “baguette” in the supermarket bread section?
Absolutely.
As the artisan bakers in our King Arthur bakery do, we’ll use just four ingredients – King Arthur Flour, yeast, water, and salt – to make a baguette that’ll do any home baker proud. A rest in the fridge gives the dough terrific flavor. And, since this recipe makes enough dough for four baguettes, you can tweak your technique baguette by baguette, one day at a time.

In the end, making baguettes at home is always a work in progress. The more you bake, the more you learn, the more you hone your skills. And trust me – no baguette you bake at home is ever a complete bust. It may not be as light as you want, as crisp-crusted, as flavorful – but that’s why croutons and crostini were invented.

Almost binned the left over bits the next day while clearing up … then the sight of bell peppers took me back to Romesco. Yum yum yum yum yum! As Julie aptly tweeted ‘@vindee ooh, don’t you love romesco? It’s great on roasted/grilled veg sandwiches too!’ What a great way to use left over bread. My first exposure to Romesco was on Julie’s beautiful blog, Dinner with Julie. I made it almost instantly at the time with left over toasted focaccia, & we totally fell in love with it. Kids too. Now I knew where these toasted left over bits were headed. Romesco of course! The colour of the sauce this time wasn’t a brilliant red like last time, as I used a red bell pepper and a yellow bell pepper, as against just red bell peppers.. The taste was great though. I eye ball the ingredients as I make my Romesco, sometimes depending on what I have on hand. This time, I increased the garlic, and gave the sauce a good dash of lime. I think the tanginess increased the flavours a lot, and gave the Romesco nice summer freshness. Not original Romesco, but a refreshing departure nonetheless.

ROMESCO DIP
as adapted from Dinner With Julie
In her words, “All the amounts here are approximate – it’s a dip, so feel free to wing it.”
Ingredients:
1/4 cup almonds,
6 garlic cloves (I roasted 1 head of garlic with the bread)
3 slices of baguette, toasted
1 red pepper, roasted
1 yellow bell pepper
1 tsp. paprika
Salt to taste
Juice of 1 lime (1 1/2 tbsp)
2-6 Tbsp. olive oil (or canola)

Method:

• Roast the almonds in a preheated oven at 180C for 10-15 minutes till golden and fragrant. Cool.
• Toast the bread & garlic for 10-15 minutes in a medium hot oven. Peel the garlic, & tear the bread into chunks.
• Transfer to a food processor & pulse until the bread and nuts turn to crumbs.
• Add the roasted bell peppers, lime juice, paprika and salt and whiz until well blended. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil and process until the mixture has the consistency of thick mayonnaise, scraping down the sides of the bowl. (I added about 2 tbsps of water to reduce the quantity of oil I was using. It didn’t compromise the taste.)
• Serve with pitas, slices of crusty baguette, cooked tail-on shrimp, naan or veggies. Good even thinned out with some pasta water and tossed with a spaghetti.
• Makes about 1 cup. (Will keep in the fridge for a day or two.
• Make sure the top is covered with a thin film of oil.)

♥ Thank you for stopping by ♥

This post has been ‘Yeastspotted’

Rachel @ FujiMama posted the same KAF baguette recipe around the same time I did, only that we live half the world apart. So I commented on hers… “You too? You won’t believe it, but I posted the same recipe last night. LOL…great post. This was a bread we all loved too! Your loaves are great! “. Just walked in to find she’s awake at 2.45am & emailing – “That is absolutely hilarious! What are the chances? Great minds truly do think alike! I’m up with the baby (it’s 2:45am here) and I’m giggling…which in turn is making her giggle. So uncanny that I couldn’t resist giving you a little shoutout, so I’ve made a small addition to the end of my post”…Go KAF!!