Going to dinner at a friend’s house tonight and I’ve offered to bring the bread!
I just LOVE making French Bread. It only needs five ingredients that are easily on hand: flour, water, sugar, salt and yeast. The whole process from start to finish takes about 5 hours – but it’s not a consistent working five hours – making bread is more like doing laundry.
And I get to smack it around:
I just LOVE making French Bread. It only needs five ingredients that are easily on hand: flour, water, sugar, salt and yeast. The whole process from start to finish takes about 5 hours – but it’s not a consistent working five hours – making bread is more like doing laundry.
And I get to smack it around:
The smacking is great fun and very relaxing.
I watched a Julia Child episode on PBS (you can find these on the internet) on making French Bread. Julia uses the help of Danielle Forestier, whom I think we both feel is a little bit pretentious.
Be that as it may, it is a good video.
I do not use bread flour, it’s expensive and all-purpose works fine. You need to throw the dough “approximately 800, 850 times.” Well, I can’t say that I can count that high nor do I really want to try.
So I do it for about ten minutes. The kneading is important to develop gluten, which holds the bread together, helps it to rise and turns it into what we consider “bread.”
What is not obvious about the dough (when watching someone else do it), is that it is very warm so it actually feels good on my hands! The throwing, while therapeutic in its own right, can get tiring on the wrists.
Slashing the loaves with a knife is my attempt at making them look more “professional.”
And splashing a little water in the hot preheated oven, just before putting the dough in, gives it the crust we love.
I have yet to make them round like traditional baguettes. I am okay with this as I am going for edible, for my first year of bread making – perhaps after I get the feel and taste down, I will start working on the presentation aspect. 
