Soy Sauce Baguette (Kneaded with a Spatula)

Name: Soy Sauce Baguette (Kneaded with a Spatula)
Yield: 2 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 200 grams Bread flour for making French bread (semi-strong); 100 grams of each (or use a combination of bread flour and cake flour); 15 grams A. Soy sauce; 140 grams A. Water; 1 grams Malt syrup (if you have it); 4 grams Sugar; 1/2 tsp Dried yeast

cookpad.japan @cookpad_jp

Chibato's Miso Baguettewas really delicious. She used miso instead of salt...so I wondered, what about using soy sauce instead of salt? So I tried it out, and the result was an aromatic French baguette with the subtle fragrance of soy sauce.

After making several baguettes and testing out various things, I found out that it's best to heat the soy sauce and water as in step 1 to prevent the dough from getting too loose; it makes the dough much easier to handle. Since the dough contains soy sauce and sugar, it turns brown quite fast. So I divided it into two portions and made 2 thin baguettes, but you could make one big baguette instead. Recipe by Youtank

cookpad.japan @cookpad_jp

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Ingredients

2 servings

200 gramsBread flour for making French bread (semi-strong)
100 gramsof each (or use a combination of bread flour and cake flour)
15 gramsA. Soy sauce
140 gramsA. Water
1 gramsMalt syrup (if you have it)
4 gramsSugar
1/2 tspDried yeast

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Steps

1

Put the A. soy sauce and water in a small pan, and heat until it almost boils. Leave it to cool down. Once it cools, weigh it again and make sure the total weighs 150 g. If there is less, add some water.
2

Put the flours in a bowl.
3

Add the malt syrup (if you have it) in the 150 g of cooled liquid from step 1 and dissolve. Add the liquids to the step 2 bowl with the flours all at once.
4

Fold and knead the mixture with a spatula using a cut-and-fold motion until it forms one mass.
5

Cover with plastic wrap so that the dough doesn't dry out, and rest for 10 to 15 minutes.
6

Knead again, scooping the dough up from the bottom (as if to punch down the dough) for 15 minutes.
7

This time, put the dough in a clean oiled bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.
8

Leave to rise until doubled in bulk. (The photo shows the dough after it's risen.)
9

Take the dough out onto a floured work surface, divide into 2, and punch down lightly to deflate. Round off each piece into a ball, place seam side down and leave to rest for 15 minutes or so.
10

Roll out each piece of dough thinly into a long stick shape.
11

I'm not good at transferring the dough later after it's risen, so I just put it on kitchen parchment paper at this point.
12

Put the dough on a long thin piece of kitchen parchment paper, and clip the edges together above the dough as shown here to stop the dough from spreading out! Leave the dough for its 2nd rising.
13

Start preheating the oven to 250°C, including the baking tray, so that's it's heated up when the dough has finished rising.
14

When the oven has reached temperature and the dough has risen, dust the surface of the dough with flour using a tea strainer. Slash the tops of the rolls, and drizzle some olive oil into the slashed parts. Mist the dough, lower the oven temperature to 210°C and bake for 25 minutes.
15

Please adjust the baking time and temperature depending on your oven. Incidentally the photo here shows 4 baguettes, or double the amount of the recipe, being baked.
16

The soy sauce is so aromatic, and the crust is so crispy - these baguettes are delicious.
17

The soy sauce and sugar make them so nicely browned too.
18

The crumb has some nice air bubbles too.
19

From here on I'll explain the baking method I came up with after a lot of trial and error. Attention! This is all done in my oven. I have a steam oven made by Hitachi by the way.
20

Put oven trays on the top and bottom racks upside down, preheat the oven at the maximum temperature of 250°C. Place the kitchen parchment paper with the formed dough on it in between the baking trays (be sure not to burn yourself!)
21

Don't switch the steam function of the oven on right away. Wait for 1-2 minutes then switch it on. Steam for 3 minutes then switch off. After 15 minutes take out the top baking tray and continue baking.
22

My oven only maintains the maximum 250°C temperature for 5 minutes, plus it doesn't reheat properly. So I warm it up twice.
23

If you protect the bread surface inside the small oven with the baking trays on the top and bottom before the slashed parts can open up properly, they will open up very nicely and form beautifully sharp, crispy edges.
24

With this method, this type of bread with a hard crust and sharp slashed edges bakes up very nicely. I don't know if it works in other oven. Please be careful not to burn yourself. I don't take any responsibility if this method somehow breaks your oven.