Bolillo or pan Frances

This week I’ve made the very best little baguettes I’ve ever made and I am just sharing this in case it helps anyone out there with their bread making.

Inspired by the rather insipid “Mexican Week” of Great British Bake Off where instead of actually celebrating Mexican traditions they chose instead to present a cartoonish and ridiculous version of Mexico. I decided that I needed to try my own hand at baking a few of the classics – pan dulce, Bolillo, and telera.

I’d already made Telera bread last year when I did the 40 sandwiches challenge but I’d never made pan dulce or Bolillo so that’s where I started. Avie and I first did a tasting of some local Mexican bakeries and then I did some research to find authentic Mexican recipes for both breads.

Pan Dulce is a wonderful treat to make for your friends: lightly sweet, pull apart soft, and deliciously fragrant. I used this recipe https://thesweetchipotle.com/authentic-mexican-pan-dulce-zrecipe/ and just added some cinnamon and orange zest as my variation. I got no complaints.

The Bolillo is a lot like other breads that I’ve made in the past. Look, I make a lot of different types of breads. And many countries have a tradition where they take a version of “baguette” from France and adapt it to their own tastes. To recap what makes a Baguette: bread flour, water, yeast (or starter), and salt. There are a few special techniques for making Baguette but that is the basic formula.

Now every culture seems to have taken this concept and made some additions. For example, banh mi bread: take the base recipe and add milk (powder), egg, lemon juice, sugar, and oil. My “hoagie” rolls are very similar to banh mi. For pan Cubano (the bread used for a Cuban sandwich) you just add sugar and lard. For po boy bread it’s again very similar, sugar and vegetable oil. And for a Bolillo you use sugar and vegetable shortening.

Other than that, all of the techniques are the same. So, for a Bolillo:

Step 1. Make a poolish:

100g water
100g bread flour
~1g dry instant yeast

Mix, cover, allow to stand 4 hours to overnight

Step 2. Mix the dough

400g bread flour
200g warm water (100F)
20g melted vegetable shortening
8g salt
5g dried yeast
5g sugar

Mix everything along with the entire poolish in a stand mixer on speed 3 for about 10-15 minutes (or longer, you probably won’t over-mix) or until the dough is soft and supple and easily passes the window pane test.

Allow to stand, covered, for 40 minutes or until doubled in size.

Step 3. Shape the loaves – TECHNIQUES

Divide the dough into 135g portions (should be 6) and roll each into a ball by taking the dough and placing it on your work surface. Gently pull and stretch the edges toward the center until you have something resembling a package. Flip it over and using a cupped hand where your fingertips lightly touch the table top and your palm lightly touches the dough, make a circular motion over the dough ball, moving it slightly, until you have something that looks like a ball. The surface of the ball should be smooth and without tears. This takes practice.

Cover your balls and allow to stand for 15 minutes while you clean your mixing bowls and prepare your baking trays. You will need a perforated baguette pan. I have two of them with 4 slots each. I prepare it by wiping it down with a little oil on a paper towel. Cleaning your bowls is important. If you’ve ever made paper mache you know that you shouldn’t allow bread dough to dry out on your equipment.

After the balls have rested, turn one over and stretch it into a triangle. Then roll the dough up into a cigar, pressing firmly on the edge after each roll. Then roll the entire thing into a 7 inch long log. You don’t need to roll this vigorously. Just a couple quick, light motions, tapering the edges as you go. You may need to pinch the seam on the bottom to fully seal.

Place the loaves on your prepared baking pan, cover, and let rest for about 45 minutes or until double in size.

Step 4: bake

Your oven will need to be prepared with a baking pan that can hold 1/2 cup of water on the bottom. Heat the oven to 450F. When the oven is ready, get a half cup of water ready, open the oven, place the loaves on the middle rack and then pour the water into the baking pan on the bottom. This will create immediate steam so shut the oven door. Set the timer for 12 minutes.

Open the oven door and rotate the loaves 180 degrees. Shut the oven door. How did the loaves look? Were they just starting to brown? Mine take somewhere between 6-10 more minutes to finish from here. It depends on how brown you like them. I think most local bakeries would go for lighter brown so closer to 6 minutes.

If you want to be very precise, you can remove the loaves when the internal temp reads 195F on an instant read thermometer.

Allow to rest on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before slicing or tearing open.

Recommended sandwiches: Argentinian Chorizo and Carne Asada Torta.

P.S.

Arsenal beat PSV last night 1-0 thanks to a goal by Granit Xhaka. It was an utterly dominant performance by Arsenal creating 24 shots to PSV’s 4. Arsenal keeper Matt Turner only made one save in the game but it was a good one in a sort of dangerous moment.

Gabriel Jesus was particularly scintillating – dancing and weaving his way between players as if they were sticks in mud – and on a normal day, when the keeper isn’t having a career day in front of goal, could have scored at least two goals.

The victory was especially sweet because PSV are managed by Ruud van Nistelrooy, a player famous for diving who once kneed and kicked Patrick Vieira and then got him sent off by pretending he’d been kicked by the Arsenal midfielder. Unlike Arsene Wenger, who coached many fantastic players who went on to be great coaches in world football, Alex Ferguson still has zero to his name.

PSV supporters showed themselves to have all of the class of their manager with some fans damaging the Arsenal seating and firing rockets at the Arsenal supporters. Hopefully UEFA punish them with at least a 5 euro fine.

After the match, some Gooners found things to argue about but they don’t bear repeating.

Qq