Homemade French Baguettes

Usually I find homemade items are better because you know the ingredients you put in, and it's fresher. Here I've tried a french baguette recipe from artisanbreadbaking.com. 

Ready for the oven

Baguettes may be one of the simplest recipes to put together, but takes a lot of time to make/perfect. I liked this website because of the detailed explanation of everything (great for a beginner like myself). It explains the different methods, poolish, biga, and hydration. Too much information for me to put here.

In the oven with slash marks done

I only used the half recipe because I didn't think we could eat that many baguettes and I didn't want to give them to anyone in case they didn't turn out right.

Done! Cooling on the rack

Lo and behold...done! Not too shabby. Nice and crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. The downside is, you have to eat these right away or they won't taste as good. You can't beat the straight out of the oven taste. Yum.

Recipe from Artisan Bread Baking
http://artisanbreadbaking.com/bread/french_baguettes/

Homemade Cinnamon Raisin Whole Wheat Bread

Had a hankering to have some cinnamon raisin bread...but I didn't want white bread, and I couldn't find any whole wheat ones...they're usually half wheat half white flour. So anyway, this was my first attempt at some type of bread due to a craving. That's the best reason to learn to make something right?

Wheat Dough

Dough after it's been kneaded and rested. It didn't really rise a whole lot, so I didn't put a before and after picture.

Rolled out dough with cinnamon sugar and raisins

Dough was flattened and rolled out into a rectangular shape. Sprinkled it with cinnamon sugar and lots of raisins.

Resting Dough in Pan

Dough was rolled up into a log and placed inside the pan to rest. I am using a cast-iron pan as I have heard good things about it's crust when baked in such a pan.

Risen Dough

Dough has risen and been brushed with oil. You can see that it is indeed puffier than before.

Baked Loaf

After baking in the oven, it's a nice golden color, even more so than white bread of course.

Cinnamon Raisin Wheat Bread

The finished product. There are so many raisins that it kept falling out. Heh heh...oh well, the more the yummier right?

I am not putting a recipe because the result was not so good. I basically just found it on food network's website. You can experiment from there. It was originally a white dough recipe. So here's some things I've learned. For breads to rise, you need gluten. Whole wheat pastry flour has very little gluten, which is what I used because it's what I had at home. Therefore, my dough came out kind of....well doughy. Hence why it didn't come out so great...it didn't really rise a whole lot. =( The crust was crunchy tho. Anyway, this was a good learning experience. More experiments with wheat dough to come.