French Bread

I deleted this recipe on my blog a few weeks ago, inadvertently.  I’m putting it back out there because it’s one of my favorites.  This is the first bread that I tried baking after I took a bread baking class last fall.  It is pretty foolproof!  It is made with love.  My cooking generally involves very few ingredients.  This bread is inexpensive to make and really doesn’t take very long.  While the dough is rising, you can do other things.  I’m not a very good baker, but have had success with bread and rolls.  To insure your success, buy some fresh bread or all purpose flour and quick rising yeast.  Why take chances with ingredients that may result in failure.  You can make a lot of delicious bread by spending less than $10 on fresh flour and yeast.

Yeast is a living organism.  Time, cold, too much heat, and salt will kill it.  Recently, I invested in a $20 food thermometer and a food scale.  My tap water does not get that hot, so I put some water in the microwave for 30 seconds.  That is too hot.  Just plain, hot, tap water.  This works.  What could be more simple?   Professional bakers often weigh their ingredients, rather than measuring them.  I’m not there yet, but it is convenient to weigh each piece of dough when making rolls.  I’m not a freak about everything being uniform and looking factory made.  I am a freak about improving the odds of evenly cooked rolls for a better product.  

I only have a few items in my kitchen that I regularly use that I spent more than $30 on.  My Kitchen-aid mixer is one of them.  I love this tool!  It makes bread making super easy.  The mixer is not necessary, but you don’t even need to knead it (get it? need to knead it?), if you have one.  The mixer does it for you!  This recipe is adapted from Food.com’sl Old Reliable French Bread. One more thing:  Don’t worry.  The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t turn out.  IThe ingredients don’t cost much and you’ll learn.  n cooking, and life, we learn a lot from our mistakes.  I should be really smart, by now!

A couple of more quick tips.  My kitchen is really chilly in winter, so after I run the hot water for the dough, I fill the mixing bowl with hot water, just to warm it up.  Of course, I dump that in to my plants before adding the ingredients.  When baking, I set all ingredients out on the counter before I begin combining ingredients.  There’s not much more frustrating than realizing that you don’t have quite enough of something when you’re half finished mixing the ingredients.  

French Bread - with a Kitchen-aid Mixer.  

1 1/4 cup warm water (hot from tap)

3 tsp. quick rise yeast

3 1/2 c. flour (bread or AP)

1 tsp. salt

2 tbsp. melted butter

Place warm water in warmed mixing bowl.

Add yeast and mix with water.

Add 3 c. flour.  Keep the 1/2 c. on the side.  Add if needed.

Add salt and melted butter.  Try not to let the salt or butter touch the yeast yet.  Notice that the mixer as no yet been powered up.

Knead with dough hook until ingredients are incorporated, but don’t over do it.

Wash out the bowl with hot soapy water.  When dry, add 1 tsp. oil.

Form the dough in to a ball.  Place the dough in the clean, warm, oiled, bowl.  Turn it over in the oil, so it’s oiled all over.  Otherwise, it’ll stick to the bowl and the plastic.  Yuck!

Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a clean, cotton dish towel.  Place it in a warm, draft free place.  Let the dough rise for about an hour.  The dough ball will double in size.

Remove the dough from the bowl and press it down.  They call this “punching”, but be gentle.  What did that dough ever do to you?  Don’t ever take out your aggression on bread dough.

Divide the dough in to half.

Shape.  You can just shape this in to a ball.  I like to roll it (or press with my fingers) into a rectangle.  Again, this is more gentle than rolling with a rolling pin.  Then roll up into a loaf.  Pinch/finish off the edges, if you’d like.  I prefer a more “rustic” look.  You can put the loaves in loaf pans, but I don’t.  I just bake them on a baking sheet.

Let the two loaves rise for another hour (about), again until about double in size.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Cut diagonal “vents” in to the top of each loaf.  Not real deep.  Maybe 1/8 to 1/4”?  These will look very cool when baking is finished.

Bake for about 25 minutes, turning the pan 180 degrees for even baking about half way through.  Bake until nicely browned.

Remove from oven.  Cool for 10 minutes before slicing.  This is the hardest part!

I like this bread with about everything.  My fav is to slice off the end, when it’s still warm, dipped in olive oil, vinegar, and diced, fresh herbs.  

I’ve probably made this bread about 15 times, and it works, EVERY TIME!  My goal is to use that entire little brown jar of yeast!  This bread lasts, wrapped in a plastic bag, in my cupboard for a week.  If I’m getting toward the end of the week and have lots left, make croutons or bread crumbs.  Trust me, you won’t want to waste any of this!