The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Safeway baguettes, how do they do it?

robadar's picture
robadar

Safeway baguettes, how do they do it?

Is anyone familiar with Safeway's artisan baguettes?  They are very light and fluffy with a thin crust that is crackly (when moistened and refreshed in the home oven for a few minutes).    Some may consider this bread the "artisan" variety of Wonder bread.   I actually found it quite good and would like to be able to produce such an airy loaf.  Does anyone know what they do to make such a loaf?

RB

G-man's picture
G-man

If there's anything other than flour, water, yeast, and salt, it's a dough improver. To replicate the bread, you'll have to use those ingredients.

If you want to get something soft and fluffy using ingredients normal folks can get their hands on easily, search for water roux.

PaddyL's picture
PaddyL

Most of the supermarket breads have soy lecithin in them.

robadar's picture
robadar

The ingredients listed on my loaf package are:  enriched bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, water, oatem, enzymes, soybean oil, ascorbic acid, salt, yeast. 

RB

G-man's picture
G-man

The items that stand out to me as dough improvers are the enzymes, soybean oil, ascorbic acid,  and the oatem. I hadn't even heard of oatem, and finding information about it on the Internet is difficult to say the least. I found one source that said it is a form of dietary fiber found, unsurprisingly, in oats.

To mimic this you'd need to know what enzymes they're using (the ingredient itself is incredibly unhelpful) and a good source of processed oat products. If you're a normal person, eggs will probably serve you very well in this regard, since they have lecithin, enzymes, and oils aplenty.

If you are unsatisfied with that and want to go all the way with this, you can buy ascorbic acid powder, more commonly known as vitamin c, and oat flour is also widely available. This will get you in the ballpark, if you tinker a bit.

G-man's picture
G-man

Adding on to the previous post, the Safeway Canada website has a recipe for a baguette. It has egg yolk and sugar.

http://recipes.safeway.ca/recipe/7028/french-baguettes.aspx

mrfrost's picture
mrfrost

Egg yolk is only for the wash.

G-man's picture
G-man

Well that'll teach me to look further into these things at work.