Daniel's French Bread

Well, a very exciting day for the Bread Blog, as this marks my first totally off-recipe attempt at making a loaf. Now, you may recall that earlier I learned that by law to call a loaf of bread "French" it must have as its ingredients only salt, flour, yeast, and water...so that's what I've done! And, I know you're wondering, but I promise: the decision to make this loaf has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that, since my car is still at the mechanics, I haven't gone to the supermarket in a few weeks now. Honest.

Start out by proofing 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast in 1 cup of warm water. After a few minutes, add this to a mixing bowl with 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 cups of all-purpose flour. Stir in another cup of flour and another 1/2 of a cup of water. The dough will still be fairly sticky, but, um...yes, that's what we're going for today. Start kneading the dough, adding in maybe another 1/4 cup of flour as you work. The stickiness of the dough means you'll have to use our ninja speed as you knead, otherwise the dough will just stick to your hand.

Anyway, since we aren't using butter this time around, pat the outside of the dough with flour and then place it in a lightly floured bowl. Cover and let sit for the


First rising (2 hours)
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Punch the dough down, and then coat your hand in flour to remove the bits of dough that are now sticking to it. Apparently the stickiness of dough increases as it rises. So, anyway, knead in just enough extra flour so that you can handle the dough, and then roll it up into a tube (just like making a snake out of clay!) Then, since I still don't have a baguette pan, flour a long piece of aluminum foil, put the dough in, and roll it up (weighting down the ends of the foil so it doesn't unwrap as the dough grows) for the


Second rising (40 minutes)
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Set the oven for 450 degrees. While it is warming up, flour a cookie sheet and transfer the dough to it (actually, trickier than it sounds! the dough is still sticky enough to stick to the tin foil a bit, and it isn't stiff and sturdy enough to pick up...I resorted to holding the long edge of the tin foil, letting it unfurl under the weight of the dough, and letting the dough plop down into place. Not exactly the most elegant solution!)

When the oven is at temperature, put the dough and cookie sheet in the oven. Now, take a liquid hand-soap dispenser (thoroughly cleaned out beforehand, and filled with water), and use it to "spray" the inside of the oven with water. The goal, of course, is to create steam inside the oven, ideally giving the bread a nice, crispy crust. The result, just as inevitably, is an accidental activation of my apartment's overly sensitive smoke detector. But don't let that deter you! Repeat the water-spraying after 5, 10, and 15 minutes. Let the bread bake for a total of 35 minutes. After which, remove it from the oven (not forgetting to admire the gradations of flour charring on the cookie sheet), and let it cool for at least half and hour or so.


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Finally, since there is no fat in this bread and thus I'm pretty sure it won't keep very well, why not make it into a nice dinner side dish? Cut the loaf in half lengthwise, and then cut that half in half depthwise. Liberally spread with butter and a little garlic, and wrap both slices up in that aluminum foil we already used. Put back in the oven (at, say, 300 degrees), for just less than 10 minutes. Unwrap and enjoy!


Tasting notes: Um...tasty! The bread itself is nothing to go on at great length about. Pretty standard, nothing overly exciting. The crust did not come out as crispy as I had hoped (although the crust on the twice-cooked garlic bread portion was just what I was looking for. But I don't know if just letting the whole loaf cook longer would have been a good idea...the crumb itself was just right, and more time in the oven probably would have just dried it out. Any ideas?

Currently still in the middle of reading: East of Eden