Lu said...
January 30, 2009 at 3:03 pm

I never tire of watching either of you demonstrating the breadmaking technique!

Feisty Bourbon Girl said...
January 30, 2009 at 3:14 pm

OMG, why does Jon Burnett have to be such a JERK. Sorry about that – used to live in Pittsburgh, and let’s just say he’s always been like that

Fiesty Bourbon Girl: I thought Jon Burnett was really fun and did a great interview… you have to be willing to fly off the handle at least a little or these interviews can get routine– for the hosts, for the viewers, and maybe even for the guests. This was one of the most fun ones I’ve been involved in. Jeff

mia said...
January 30, 2009 at 4:13 pm

cool! that actually helped a lot since I just tried making a baguette out of my third batch of dough. The first two weren’t so great because I was using water that was too hot – but number 3 has great promise! So then I go online while it’s “resting” and look what I see!

I see that I don’t have to be quite so afraid to “handle” the dough just a little bit to get it into a shape. Tomorrow I shall try again

jeff said...
January 30, 2009 at 4:23 pm

Thanks Lu!

Fiesty Bourbon G: I thought Jon Burnett was really fun and did a great interview… you have to be willing to fly off the handle at least a little or these interviews can get routine– for the hosts, for the viewers, and maybe even for the guests. This was one of the most fun ones I’ve been involved in.

Mia: Without saying so, I did a “letter-fold” technique, which makes for the most even baguette. Zoe’s post (above) goes into that in more detail. You can skip it but then your baguettes will have knobby ends. I used to always do them that way. But for the ‘Epi, it’s nicer to get them uniform.

And yeah, never use hot water. Lukewarm at most.

laura said...
January 30, 2009 at 9:08 pm

Jeff,really enjoyed watching the video. I’ve never seen anyone eat your bread dough raw before.Maybe a subject for you’re third book- Ways to enjoy the raw dough in 5 minutes a day!

mia said...
January 31, 2009 at 8:55 am

OH my gosh.. just had to come back and tell ya I just took loaves out of the oven – my third try.

they SANG!!!! I didn’t even know bread would do such a thing and when I read that description, I thought “huh”? But they DID! I’m telling everyone I know about this book

jeff said...
January 31, 2009 at 9:33 am

Tweet tweet! Thanks Mia.

Karen said...
January 31, 2009 at 2:08 pm

Nice vid – I was glad to see how you cut the epi *and* I realize that maybe I’m being unneccesarily a little too gentle with my dough. Maybe it comes with confidence. Love this book and all the bread I’ve made from it. I tell everyone about it!

jeff said...
January 31, 2009 at 3:06 pm

Karen: Yeah, we give slightly problematic advice (“be gentle, but not TOO gentle!”). You get away with a little more because baguettes and pains d’epis are skinny… there’s not much weighing them down if you over-compress them a litte.

nads said...
February 4, 2009 at 8:20 pm

hi you know how when you bake a pain d’epi you get that lovely wide crust.i’d like to get that with my normal loaves and baguettes. is there a technique i could use with kitchen shears? thanks

jeff said...
February 5, 2009 at 7:13 am

You can use a shears to snip the cuts, but it won’t actually be that different from using a knife.

nads said...
February 12, 2009 at 4:50 am

how about if i snipped off small chunks would that work? how do they get those wide patches of crust on baguettes is it different to the diagonal slashes?

jeff said...
June 7, 2009 at 1:09 pm

I probably wouldn’t snip off chunks. My guess is that you can get that spreading by using bread flour (or adding vital wheat gluten), which gives you more “dough strength” and therefore a stonger gluten cloak. Which will spread out more impressively.