Baguette help!
Hi everyone! So after much building up of courage I finally decided to try baguettes after my wife bought me a baking stone and... I have questions! First, I’m not sure if this is the best recipe to start with but I decided to give it a go using the French bread recipe from bread bakers apprentice. I know I made one mistake by forgetting to put my cast iron pan at the bottom for steam so I’ll have to remember that next time. I’ll just start with two questions I have and go from there. The first is, he says you can shape the dough using a lightly oiled counter. I tried that and I just couldn’t get the seams to stick together very well and the dough just stuck to my hand while trying to press the seams in. In fact the seams broke open on the bottom. Are there any good tips for getting the seams to stick together? Should I not use oil to prep them? My second question is, I tried to roll out the baguettes into longer cylinders but they just sort of stayed the same shape and got rather lopsided in the process. I tried watching a few videos but I’m still confused. My understanding is that you try to apply pressure while rocking back and forth but I couldn’t quite get it to lengthen very much :( any tips for that? Thanks all!