Fast French baguette

I am slowly conquering my fear of making bread. Slowly.

I ran across this recipe for a fast French baguette the other day and decided that it was probably too good to be true, but I’d try it anyway. It was either this or those pretzel bites everyone has been blogging about lately. Fortunately, I found out that this recipe isn’t too good to be true. My results were a little on the ugly-looking side but excelled in taste.

This recipe will give you 2 foot long baguettes. I made mine slightly longer than a foot. I adapted this recipe from Girl Versus Dough, who adapted it from Mark Bittman.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup warm water
• 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp salt

Directions:

In a large, nonreactive bowl, stir yeast and 1 cup warm water together. Let stand for 5 minutes.

Add flour(both all-purpose and whole wheat) and salt and stir until combined.

Once combined, knead 5-10 minutes or until dough is fairly smooth and elastic. Shape into a ball and place in a lightly greased bowl.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about one hour.

After doubled in size, punch down dough and divide into two equal pieces.

Roll each piece into a 12-16 inch rope. Place side by side , about 3 inches apart, on a lightly floured baking sheet. Cover loosely with plastic wrap. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

When oven has preheated and bread has risen slightly(about 20-30 minutes), remove plastic wrap and cut a few slashes into bread with a sharp knife.

Place baguettes in oven, reduce heat to 375F and bake until lightly brown 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven spritz lightly with water bottle and let cool before cutting.

While you are making this bread, I would also recommend making buffalo chicken.

This bread goes great with salads.

Or slice it almost all the way through, top with buffalo chicken and bleu cheese, broil and devour.

This bread is definitely an upgrade from store-bought and easy enough to make on a week night.