Homemade Baguettes (+ the World's Best Hot Dog)

If you’d like a second helping of Healthy Delicious, go check out my guest post on 5 Star Foodie’s blog.  It’s a good one!

Also,  don’t forget to submit your plum recips for this week’s BSI- you have until Sunday!

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When I went to France I ate a lot of wonderful food. But what I remember enjoying the most was the simple street food that I would pick up from a cart or a sidewalk cafe. In particular, I loved the hot dogs, which were serves with spicy dijon mustard inside a baguette. They were the best hot dogs that I’ve ever had, and even though it s been a few years, I still cave them from time to time. To celebrate Bastille Day (yeah, not exactly timely with the post) I decided to try to recreate them at home. With homemade baguettes and hot dogs from a local butcher, these were every bit as good as the ones I had in France.

The key to these are the homemade baguettes, which are surprisingly easy to make. They have a nice soft, slightly salty interior with a nice, crispy crust that is exactly what you want in a baguette. Start to finish, they take under 2 hours and they only use 4 ingredients that you probably have in your cabinets right now. Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on packages bread? It’s so long and full of weird things that just don’t belong in bread. These baguettes are as simple as it gets, and they taste better than any bread that you can gte int the store. Because they don’t have ay preservative though, they won’t keep very long so you’ll want to freeze whatever you don’t use after a day. You can reheat them in the oven and the crust will crisp back up very nicely. If you want, you can purposefully underbake them a little so that when you rebake them they don’t get too dark. I honestly could have let these get darker, but I was impatient (they were fully cooked, just not very dark). They’ll be perfect and golden when I reheat them.

Baguettes

• 2 cups warm water, divided
• 1 tsp dry yeast
• 4 cups AP flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 egg mixed with 1 Tbs cold water

Combine yeast with 1/4 cup warm water. Mix thoroughly to dissolve, the let sit for 10 minutes. Combine the flour and salt. Add the yeast mixture and remaining warm water, mixing until a dough begins to form. Knead for about 6 minutes. Cover with a towel and let rise for bout 45 minutes in a warm spot in your kitchen (I rise mine in the oven set to “proof”). Punch down and divide into however many loaves you want (for sandwiches or subs, I like to split it into 6 loaves.) Shapes loaves and arrange on a baking sheet. Let rise another 20 minutes, or until nearly doubled in size.Brush with egg and water mixture and use a sharp knife to score the tops of the loaves.

Place a dish of water in the bottom of the oven (to create steam) and heat oven to 400. Bake baguettes for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake for an additional 5-10 minutes or until crusts are golden.

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Thanks to ValleyWriter for the Kreativ Blogger Award!

The rules of the Kreative Blogger award are as follows:
1. Thank the person who has given you the award.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who has nominated you for the award.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on which of the blogs to let them know they have been nominated.

So here goes… 7 things about me:

1. It wasn’t that long ago that I ate almost exclusively canned soup and lean cuisines. Now I hardly ever eat either of those.
2. I am petrified of snakes. I hate zoos, pet stores, and parks.
3. I have a BA in political science and a MA in political management.
4. I get really excited by post-it notes, binder clips, and label makers.
5. I love stupid TV shows like Real Housewives
6. I used to be a competitive Irish step dancer
7. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 25.

Passing it on to (so hard to pick because so many people deserve this!!):

1. CG at Uncovering Food
2. Mary at One Perfect Bite
3. Sophie at Sophie’s Food Files
4. Zoe at Zoe Blog
5. Happy Cook at My Kitchen Treasures
6. Rebecca at Rosey Rebecca
7. Sara at Small Kitchen Big Ideas