Projekt: My Kamikaze French Bread/Baguette

I love bread. I love the smell of fresh bread when it comes out of the oven. I love the crusty ones and I love soft ones with coconut or red bean filling. I love dunking them in soup or curry. I just love having warm sourdoughbread with salty butter. I love the idea of bread and everything about it. I am also very thankfull that I am given the oppurtunity to live a part of my life in a bread-heaven that is Germany.

Problem: I dont bake bread but I want to. I am teribble at it (believe me for I have tried!) and I find it too complicated, even for my food-conducted brain. Plus, nobody bought me a bread maschine, from which I heard helps a lot in bread baking. I love the idea of baking bread at home so much, that I bake storebought ready-made dough. But thinking of baking bread from scratch scares me. It requires a lot of time-planing, total obedience to the recipe and arms of professional wrestler, which all of it I dont have. I still remember the arms of the german bakers a few years ago at a seminar ;). I did try and when I fail, I have to waste and I loath wasting food. Of all the bread recipe that I tried, only a few succeded : pizza dough, spelt buns and one guatemalan choc bread.

Nevertheless the idea of having the skill to bake bread at home is motivating, though I have only foodblogs and my little scientific knowledge as my teachers. I was feeling 'bready' and I dont know why but this morning I felt that I have to have warm baguette for our dinner tonight. Usually we will have frozen ones and shove them into the oven when needed. But not today sir, I am making my very own French bread from scratch (gila motivated tak tentu pasal).

Started out with 250g Flour, 1teaspoon salt, 1/2 tablespoon yeast and 240g warm water. Mix everything with half of the flour. It was watery, I saw no dough, only bubbling thick gooey mess. I checked the recipe, I did exactly as described. Hmmm?? Maybe it will become a dough when I put the rest of the flour later.

Kamikaze. I put the gooey mess on my heater and cover it up with moist towel. The recipe told me to put the 'dough' to rest for 3 hours, so I did.

After three hours: gooey mess with more bubbles, but I had a good feeling. I then added the rest of the flour. Still gooey. No dough. Hmmmm??

Kamikaze. I added one tablespoon of flour at a time, kneading. When the dough starts to form, I probably added almost circa 200g flour. It doesnt matter now, at least everything starts looking like bread. I kneaded for 10 minutes and put the dough in a bowl which I brushed with olive oil. Left to rest for another hour.

After one hour: Looking good, dough doubled in size. Still a little sticky. Hmmm??

Kamikaze. Dusted my rolling mat with lots of flour and start kneading. I formed a french bread and put it on the heater again for another 20minutes. Preheated the oven at 230°C.

After 20 minutes: Looking good. Cut some stripes on it for the french bread look. Shove it into the oven with a bowl of water.

PHEWW!....Alass...My first ever French Bread/ Baguette. Funny how I couldnt follow the recipe instructions from the start. Probably why they say experience is the best teacher. This is by far the best bread I have baked so far. It looks like bread, even smells like bread (usually my bread smells like pure yeast..haha) and taste damn good. A little kamikaze spirit helps by amateur baking.

The best compliment was when mamak came home from work and saw the loaf of bread, he asked when did I buy the bread loaf. I told him proudly, homemade laa...

I'm happy and a little bread-wiser!