Today’s project is to fashion baguettes. Actually, this was a two-day affair because I first had to make the pate fermentee. This is a mixture of flour, salt, yeast, and water that gets a day’s headstart in order to imbue the bread with more flavor. Here is how it looks after a day of fermenting and just before it is incorporated into the main dough:
pate fermentee
My baguettes are quite pale in color. I believe that is because I used organic flour. The book says to add in some sort of barley additive if using organic flour to give it a darker color. Hrrrmph. Same ol’ story. I don’t happen to have barley whatchamacallit; fer cryin’ out loud, I thought I was pretty hot stuff for having organic flour!
as the well-known French pirate Pepe le-Pop-Eye might say, “moi baguettes”