I’m on a baking adventure for bread these days, partly because of the many bread posts I see recently and mostly because the family seems to clear bread faster than cakes. I got interested in Bahn Mi and decided to give this a try. I like how easy it is to make and how it taste a lot like baguette which I really like. Recipe adapted slightly from Olady Bakes.
(makes 12 rolls)
Ingredients
- 500g bread flour
- 310g warm water
- 20g canola oil
- 10g caster sugar
- 2 tsp instant yeast
- 2 tsp salt
Method
- Preheat oven at 220 degrees C.
- Place the bread flour, caster sugar, yeast and salt in a large mixing bowl, being careful to place the yeast and salt on different sides of the bowl.
- Stir to mix and create a well in the middle of the flour mixture.
- Pour in oil and water and knead to bring the dough together.
- Once the dough comes together in the bowl, tip it out on a work surface and knead away! You can choose to use a mixer fitted with a dough hook, but these days, I have come to enjoy getting some arm workout, kneading bread dough. I love the feel of bread dough and how the texture changes from sticky mess to soft elastic smooth dough after about 5 minutes of kneading.
- Once the dough is elastic and smooth and does not stick to work table anymore, you can smooth it into a ball and leave to rest in a bowl, covered with a tea towel. You also also test the readiness of the dough but pinching a small piece off, stretching it to see if it can form a ‘window pane’ effect. This means the dough can be stretched so thin, you can read newspaper underneath it.
- Leave the dough to rise to twice its original size. This will take about 30 minutes.
- Once proofed, knock out the air from the dough, tip onto a work surface and give it a gentle knead. Divide the dough into 70g portions, rolling into a ball and giving them another 15 minutes rest, covered in tea towel.
- Then roll out each dough and roll into a swiss roll, pinching the ends to form a rough baguette shape.
- I don’t have a baguette pan, so I improvised by resting them on tea towels, in between ‘fan folds’ of the tea towel.
- Leave to rest for about 45 minutes or when the dough doubles in size.
- Score the dough and spray generously with water and send immediately into the oven.
- Place a tray of water in the oven. Bake in preheated oven of 220 degrees C for a total of 20 – 25 minutes. Spray water into the oven at the 1 minute, 2 minutes and 3 minutes mark. After 10 minutes, remove the tray of water.
- Once baked, remove to cool completely.
This is easy to bake and really lovely when warmed to enjoy.