Fallen in Love

These baguettes are easy to make and the ingredients are pretty standard in any pantry. Try it, and you will fall in love with them, especially when your whole kitchen smells like fresh baked bread. You can find the recipe here. See below on my variation from the original recipe. I haven't perfected it yet as there is room for improvement, but it's a good start I think?

Things that I have done differently from the posted recipe:
1. I have replaced half cup of bread flour with all purpose flour. I read from a forum (which I lost the link!) that the best recipe uses all purpose flour for baguette. I was skeptical, so this time I replaced only a small about. The amount was probably too small to recognize though.

2. I have learned so much from Ciril Hitz's youtube video about how to form baguettes.  Hint: if you don't have a special knife that was shown in the video to score the dough "ears", I found a serrated knife works better than a straight edge paring knife.

3. I did not brush the dough with egg whites. I like my baguette to have a dull finish. Egg white gloss is too glossy, while not adding too much crunch to the crust.

4. I took out the pan of water 5 minutes before the scheduled finish baking time. The crust is thicker and stayed crunchy longer.

5. I tried both using a silicon pad and a bare baking tray with cornmeal to prevent from sticking. The baguettes looked different. Can you tell from the above photo which one was from silpad and which two were from cornmeal?