My baguette recipe

Having a large number of children, it is always a challenge to find time for recurring activities such as a worm farm, a compost pile, looking after the chicken or making bread everyday. The trick I sue is that anything I do on a regular basis must take no energy for getting ready and no time (ie less than 5 minutes) to complete otherwise I know it's not going to happen. So here is my 5 minutes recipe for fresh baguettes.

Step 0 - Ingredient supply.

Making bread everyday involves having an infinite supply of flour, this means I always need to check that I will have enough flour for the next couple of days. We buy organic flour by bags of 5kg and I use a container I keep on my bench top. Actually I use two container, one for plain flour and on efor wholemeal which allows me to vary the recipe from day to day. I also keep extra 1kg bag of flour in the freezer just in case I run out. You can use any type of flour but a strong flour yield better results (eg > 14KJ , high protein or high gluten)
For the raising agent I use dry yeast, the packet I keep in fridge last a very long time and I always have a spare.
Water is unlimited since I use tap water.
I like to use iodised salt, but really any table salt will do.

Step 1 - Recipe

I use an electronic scale so I can reset the tare at each step. In a large bowl add in order

• 7g of salt, any baby spoon will hold 7 g so I don't need to weight it
• 550 to 570g of water depending on my mood or how much fall in the bowl
• 700g of flour (I use a mix of 200g wholemeal and 500g plain, but anything will do, you can even mix other types of grain as well, the more the wholemeal, the more water you need)
• 7g yeast
• optional: 20g of SLA (Sunflower Linseed Almond meal) for taste and color. You can get fancy here eg: raisin, muesli, etc.

Mix until you have a big homogenous blob, cover with a wet towel, wait a few hours (overnight is fine on the kitchen counter)

Step 2 - Cooking

• preheat oven to maximum temp
• put flour on workbench, empty dough on flour, cut in 4, shape the dough in baguette, put on baking tray, put a bit of oil on baking tray first if you think it's sticky
• spray baguettes with water to wet extra flour
• cut bread with knife/scissors to make pretty marking on bread and avoiding it to crack while cooking
• put tray in oven, lower temp to 220C (fan forced), throw half a glass of water at the bottom of the oven (this help with the crust)
• wait 14 minutes (might be longer, depending on the oven)

It happens form time to time that I forget something, if it's the yeast, we get flat bread, which taste like a brick, but the kids love it. If I forget the salt, the bread is tasteless, but you can butter it up.

And sometimes the flour just drops on the floor...