Knead Baguette Bread Dough

Knead Baguette Bread Dough
My name is Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today I am going to show you how to make a real French baguette. Okay once again nice clean hands. I like to take one finger just to get it going and this way I can spread the flour out evenly and not worry about making a huge mess. I kind of fold it in from the edges. Now it is time to get the whole hand in there. What I am doing is I am just kind of gently squeezing this and if you get any flour on the cutting board it is not a big deal because you are going to flour the cutting board anyway. Your dough should have a really nice almost elastic-y and fluffy kind of feel and it is going to have a distinct smell to it which would be the yeast. Anybody who has made bread before would be familiar with the smell. Make sure you go all the way to the bottom here and make sure that I pick up all this flour. What I am going to do now is lay this out here. See right here on the inside it is still a little sticky and I am going to put a little flour on it here. I am going to get both of my hands pretty floured up. I just start folding it into itself and it is going to have kind of a shaggy look right now because it is still uneven. As far as the moisture you are going to have parts that are dry and parts that are not. Not every recipe is exact, flour and humidity play a big role in it. Oh I left my ring on, that's a big no no. That will effect is if you have to add more flour or maybe less flour. In this case I think I am going to be either right on or just a little short We are going to see here in a second. The amount of flour the recipe calls for is four cups but it may end up being five depending on the humidity outside and if you have some really sticky dough. I am just going to keep folding it in towards the center and it is starting to stick to my cutting board which is not good so I am going to get more flour on my cutting board.