{La Baguette de Tradition}

 

Nothing is more French than a baguette.In my eyes, nothing completes a French dinner as much as a baguette. You eat it the day it's made; fresh - and throw all the left overs away the next morning. Sure enough, the next morning, you'll find people queued outside of boulangeries, waiting to buy their daily breads, and people walking down the streets, holding baguettes, with or without berets.

It's all part of the charming French culture, entering a bakery and chatting with the bakers. Please, don't get me started about the different awesome breads out there; so inspiring! I wished this bakery culture existed in Norway as well, because it's both practical and social. And so, so good. But for now, I'll have to make due with baking breads of my own.

A bread like la baguette de tradition. A baguette de tradition is a pre-war-styled baguette; more chewy and shorter than the classic long, ''standard'' version, and, by law since 1993, must be made from double-fermented dough, with no artificial yeast and no chemical additives.

This particular recipe derives from the Parisian Grenier à Pain, and it won the 2010 Traditional Baguette Contest. The baker, Djibril Bodian, supplied President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Elysée Palace with baguettes throughout 2010 and won him €4,000.

{La Baguette de Tradition}

From Independent.co.uk

*Ingredients*

500g flour (T55 in France)

350g water

12g salt

7g fresh yeast

1.Dissolve the yeast in the water. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl, add the yeast mixture and mix well, until a complete dough is formed. It should be quite a sticky paste. Do not add flour! Cover with a damp cloth and let rise, making sure to press and turn the dough every twenty minutes. Do this four times. Cover and let rise for half an hour.

2.Carefully place the dough a floured surface, lightly flour the top of the dough and stretch the dough left and right nine times. Cover with a cloth; let stand twenty minutes and repeat the process twice. Divide the dough in three pieces of the same weight, and place in baguette forms. Leave covered with a cloth for twenty minutes.

3.Preheat the oven to 230°C. Place a pan of water in the bottom of the oven, so as to let it steam. Sprinkle the top of the baguette with flour and bake at 220°C for fifteen minutes.