I promise to bake some bread for an Easter-Dinner with my parents. It’s been a long time since I baked Baguette, and there are so many nice recipes in “Advanced Bread and Pastry” that I had not to think about what kind of bread I want to bake.

The recipe I choosed worked fine and forming the baguettes was easly done. But when I tried to put the first Baguette to my peel, I realized that it was to big! But thats no problem, I thought, the oven is longer than the peel. I take second peel to support the part of the bread that did not fit to the peel and  transported the bread to the oven. When I had the baguette halfway on the stone I realized that the oven was to small for my baguette, too! I pushed the loave somehow into the oven, produzing a funny bended bread that deserve not the name baguette.

The remaing baguettes had the same size, so what to do? Finally I take a scissors cut all bread in half. But that look not so nice, so I decicded to do some Pain d’Epi. For this I cut the baguette five times on the right side and turn every second pices to the left side.

Baguette / Pain d’Epi

yield about 10 Pain d’Epi

Poolish:

• 380 g flour (Typ 550)
• 380g Water
• 1 g yeast

Dough

• 760 g flour (Typ 550)
• 395g Water
• 14g Yeast
• 23g Salt
• 760g Poolish

Mix water, flour and yeast for the poolish and ferment it overnight (10 to 12 hours).

The next mornig: Knead flour, 350g water and poolish  untill it is homogeneus (aroung 1 min). Let rest for 1/2 hour (Autolysis) In the meantime disolve the yeast in the remaing water.

After Autolysis: Knead the dough for 5 min, now add the salt and the yeast-water in small portions. Wait untill one portions is complete incorporated before adding the next one.

Knead for another 5 min.

Proof for 1 hour.

Divide the dough into pieces of 200g (Stefanie: I diveded the dough to 400g pices but we all now the result, don’t we? 😉 ) Rested the pieces fpr 20 min.

Form now to baguettes (about 30 cm) and proof them for 1 hour.

In the meantime heat bakingstone in the oven to 250°C.

For the pain d’Epi cut the baguette five times on the right side and turn every second pices to the left side.

Bake on the preheated stone for 25 min with steam.

I’m sending this Pain d’Epi to Cinzia (Cindystar) for the Bread Baking Day event which was founded bei Zora (Einmal umrühren bitte).  The theme of this month is spring country bread. So what is spring part in this bread? It is the nice day we spend in my parents garden. See this beautiful daffodils in the background! It is springtime!

UPDATE: The round-up is now online. You can found there so many beautiful breads!