Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

For Rita

Like any “serious” culinary blog, a recipe always begins with an epic tale, because who doesn’t love a good yarn while waiting for the dough to rise? As I ponder a riveting story that might put you to sleep, here’s the recipe.

Ingredients for 4 baguettes

• 800 g Organic King Arthur Bread Flour from Costco
• 20 g salt
• 7 g dry yeast
• 1 tsp (15 g) turmeric powder
• 750 ml water, lukewarm (90 – 110 F)
• if you don’t forget, half a teaspoon of black pepper
  • if you forget, no biggie

Instructions

In a PYREX yellow bowl, add 100 g of flour, 7 g of dry yeast, and 100 ml of water (90-110°F). Mix everything and wait a bit, about 10 minutes, to activate the yeast. If the water is too cold, it takes longer; if the water is too hot, it kills the yeast.

Just mix the flour with the other dry ingredients and sift it all together (throw in the turmeric and pepper while you’re at it). Then toss everything into the bowl with the yeast and whatever else you’ve got.

Slowly add the water and knead it into a soft dough. You might need to throw in a bit more flour later. The dough should pull away from the bottom of the bowl, but if it doesn’t, don’t stress, just scoop it out! I did.
Cover it up and let it rise in a warm spot for at least an hour, or until it’s about doubled in size. (I just left mine overnight at room temp in a plastic bowl with a lid, all covered with a kitchen towel; I didn’t want it to have any bad dreams.)

After about an hour (or in the morning), grab that dough from the yellow PYREX bowl and plop it onto a floured surface for a little ‘stretch and fold’ action. Just a heads up: when you take the dough out, it might look like a total mess. No worries! Once you do the stretch and fold, it’ll start to look like proper dough. Just be careful it doesn’t get too sticky, so don’t skimp on the flour. Check out the video below for how to stretch and fold (she chats a lot, but you only need to watch it once).

Put it back in the bowl and let it rise for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take it out, do another stretch and fold. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces. On a floured surface, press each piece into a circle about 20 cm in size with floured hands. Roll the circle up and place seam-down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Try to give it the baguette shape. With a very, very sharp knife make some small cuts on the top. Cover with the kitchen towel and let rise for another 15 minutes or until the oven heats to 475F.

Fill a metal bowl with half a cup of water and place it in the oven (you need some steam).
Bake the baking sheet with the baguettes on the middle rack for about 30 minutes. Check the baguettes by knocking on the bottom. If it sounds like “empty (hollow)”, it’s done. [I had to check them twice, I added 10 more minutes, then 7 more minutes]. Then let the baguettes cool on a wire rack.

Job Done

During this baguette baking process, alcohol consumption is, surprisingly, highly encouraged.
Good luck, I guess!