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Vegan MoFo

Vegan MoFo Day 6: Fougasse

I’m not an impressive baker by any stretch. For a while I knew my way around a no-knead sourdough, but grad school and hot weather killed my baking schedule and then time went and killed my starter (presumably; I’m terrified to look). So I didn’t want to bake something incredibly complicated–I’m out of my depth–but there was a bread I remembered from GBBO that I always wanted to try: the leaf-shaped fougasse.

The dough itself is a pretty basic one: flour, water, salt, yeast, olive oil. A bit of fresh rosemary for yum. I let it go in the stand mixer for a bit and proofed it for an hour. Shaping it wasn’t much harder than making pizza–just with more knife cuts.

Above: Stretched dough with fresh cuts in the shape of a leaf, courtesy my paring knife.

There’s a brush of olive oil and a scattering of lovely pink salt. It only bakes for 15 minutes in a hot oven. I slid the parchment paper from my board onto a pizza stone. Easy peasy. Came out lovely and brown.

Above: Freshly baked bread!

Somewhere between foccacia and a chewy pita, really. But prettier.

Above: Mmm, bread.
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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 8: If at First You Don’t Succeed…

Learning to make bread is, by all accounts, a lifetime pursuit, and I’m not nearly dedicated enough to aim for greatness.

But I can aim to improve over time.

So this is my attempt to make baguettes. I think I’ve made them… 3 or 4 times before? And they usually turned out kind of awkwardly shaped and pale colored, but decently baked on the inside.

Today’s batch was an improvement. Still far from the standard, but better.

The slashes didn’t spread except in a couple places, but the seams on the side sure did. The crust didn’t brown as much as I hoped, but it did get a halfway decent crunch. I used sourdough in the poolish but there wasn’t much tang in the end result. Plus I did manage to split the dough into precisely measures thirds and it was a consistency that was easy to work with for all the stretches and folds.

Dividing up the dough

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Folding into loaves

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Rolled into batons for a final proof

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Baking…imperfectly

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Final result

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Inside shot (yum)

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Food Blog

Pan alla mama