French Baguettes

I should preface this post by saying I don't own a bread machine and until recently, I thought you couldn't make bread unless you owned a bread machine. Maybe I shouldn't have actually admitted that publicly.
This recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/French-Baguettes/Detail.aspx mentions a bread machine is not needed. I have been waiting for day to try it. First, I couldn't find bread flour, but I did!
This time, I am actually following the recipe to a T, and I had my camera on hand. I dug out my dough hook for my mixer (which I had never used the dough hook until now).



I love my kitchen aid mixer and I try to use it as often as possible! After that, I gathered all my ingredients listed in the recipe.

I threw everything into the mixer bowl (I guess I stopped caring about the order of ingredients at this point!) and doubtfully looked at it. It looked like a big mess, but I decided to move forward anyway!
To the rescue came my Kitchen Aid mixer! After mixing that mess on level 1, it actually started to look like dough! I have learned from years ago that I must always use pans larger than expected. Don't ask how I learned, just trust me on this! So, I grabbed the largest bowl I had, greased it with some crisco and threw the dough in there. I turned the dough a few times so the doguh was slightly covered in crisco.
I covered the whole bowl in a dish towel (who knows where I cot this idea from) and let it sit for 30 minutes. I expected the dough to rise more, but here it is after 30 minutes.
I'm going to let it sit for another 30 minutes in hopes that it will rise more. After that, I'll start cutting it and baking it.

After 30 minutes, the dough rose a bit, but it definitely didn't double in size but I decided to just knead it out and form baguette shaped dough things! I rolled them out, then rolled up the dough pushing the air bubbles out and forming them.


Then, I sliced the dough every inch or so, laid them on a greased cookie sheet and covered them again for 30 minutes.

After this, I'll pop them into the over for 20-25 minutes on 375 (and don't forget the egg wash!) and hopefully the house will still be standing!

The final product is really tasty! Definitely worth making again!