OMFG! It has been a long time since I’ve baked anything meaningful other than a couple of Pain au Levain in my Dutch oven on my Traeger grill. And the reason for that is because my ovens have been broken for a long time. They were still usable for some basic baking, but not for bread as they wouldn’t hold temperature consistently enough for bread baking.

But yesterday, my new double wall oven unit got delivered and installed. So, this afternoon I made baguettes! I haven’t made baguettes in a couple of years, so I was a little apprehensive. I didn’t know if I remembered the shaping technique. But I needn’t have worried because muscle memory took over and they turned out great!

The thing about baguettes is that making the dougn and going through the fermentation process is a no-brainer. Where it gets extremely difficult is in the shaping. That’s the part I was worried about. And though I was slower at shaping than in the past, I still had it!

Admittedly, I’ve lost my baker’s hands. Deftly handling dough without it sticking to my hands was a little challenging. But then I was expecting that and had a bowl of water handy to keep my hands moist. As I bake more, they’ll return. It just takes repetition.

And speaking of repetition, I recently started lurking in the bread forums again. It has been as if I never stopped reading them. Anyway, the answer to most folks’ questions is simply this: Repetition. There’s simply no substitute for getting your reps in, especially with baking. And as with any craft, repetition not only builds your skill, but it also builds your intuition and feeling for handling and processing dough.

And though I haven’t seriously baked bread in a couple of years, because I made countless loaves in the past and built up my skills through repetition, while I was a bit rusty with the mechanics, I still had the feel for the dough. It was wonderful!