Traditional French Baguette

French baguettes are always my husband favorite as he prefers salty bread rather than sweet bread. And hence this is my determination to keep myself updated and improve in making bread area. Today, my baking chemistry is towards the chewy traditional bread, indeed the baguette taste are so much different from Europe or Australia. The main factor in fact is due to the flour quality that hardly can be found in Malaysia. I made the original baguette in these different countries, but all the result came out differently. In conclusion, the quality of flour really is a differentiation factor to make the good quality of french baguette.

My experiment today is more to improvise this differentiation factor, knowing that I could not get the French flour in Malaysia, what I made the difference is by using malt sugar in my recipe. Even for malt, I was looking around for quite some time. You must wondering why am I using malt sugar in the baguette recipe, actually malt contains several enzymes which breaks down the starch in flour into simple sugar. Sugar is important for two primary reasons: first is yeast's food (fermentation) and caramelization of sugar contributes greatly to a rich crust color. Most french flours have malt added during the production, so you can get fine results without adding more malt to the dough at mixing time.This malt sugar can be only added a little bit as you do not want your french baguette to turn up as sweet bread at the end of the day. 

So in my theory, 0.4% of malt sugar out of your bread flour contains should be the best combination. Here comes my chewy baguette but crusty outside :)

See the inner texture of these traditional French Baguette, indeed it's chewy inside and crusty outside

Made my own baguette tray myself (DIY)

See below for Hankerie's recipe

Ingredients

1. 500g bread flour
2. 8ml malt sugar
3. 1tsp sugar
4. 2tsp salt
5. 1tsp instant yeast
6. 220ml luke warm water (adjust accordingly your weather humidity)

Method

1. Mix well all the ingredients above except water.
2. Add on the water bit by bit into dough, it might take some time to let the flour to absorb water. Being patience in this stage. This step is very vital.
3. Proof the dough at least an hour. Cover with towel.
4. Spread some flour on bench. Take out the dough and remove all the bubbles from yeast.
5. Dive the dough to four. Shape into long shape. Proof another 1 hour.
6. Bake in steamed oven in 250C for 20 minutes.
7. Crusty baguette ready to serve.