Baking in Real Life

Happy weekend dabblers...so last night I had what I like to call a "baking in real life moment," and thought I would share it with you all. I had a craving for bread after work last night and wanted to mix it up from my usual sourdough making, so I started to make baguettes.

I made the dough.

Let it rise for an hour and a half, punched it down and let it rise for another hour and a half.

Then, I started to form the baguettes. The dough is divided into three parts and patted into ovals.

After some folding and rolling, these beauties were made:

The baguettes needed to rise for another hour and a half, and by this time I was questioning whether or not I was going to be able to stay awake and bake them. "Baking in real life" sometimes means that rise time doesn't exactly coincide with sleep time. Needless to say...I fell asleep without getting these pretty things into the oven. They continued to rise, and fall, over night...the flavor developed into the tangy sourdough that I love, but the bread lost all its lift. It turned into more of a sourdough flatbread than a baguette. But, why not bake them off?

The results. Not at all pretty, but tasty. You can see my test corner in the bottom right of the photo. The dough was soft, chewy and tangy...sourdough flatbread in all its finery. Rather than scrapping the whole thing, I got creative.

 Sourdough flatbread pizzas were born. I rubbed the bread with olive oil and topped it with fire roasted tomatoes, dried oregano, basil and garlic, fresh mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, black pepper and red pepper flakes.

I baked the flatbreads at 425°F until the cheese was melted and bubbly.

The finishing touch was fresh basil and oregano. Yum.

This baguette failure turned into an absolutely delicious dinner. Sometimes recipes fail, sometimes you just need to sleep...whatever the reason, remember that if something doesn't work out, you can adapt, or scratch the whole thing and order take out.

Here's to a great weekend full of dabbling successes, whether intentional or not :)

-The Delicious Dabbler