My French Bread
Friday, January 28th, 2011French Cooking.” One of the first things I looked at in the books was
the chapter on baking bread with one thing in mind: French bread. I
have been making my own version of French Bread for a little while now
and was curious about the correct way to make it. I read through the
twenty page selection dedicated to this one type of bread and was
astounded at the amount of discipline that is required for this French
staple.While I really look forward to one day making some French Bread in the
way listed in my new cook book, for now I will stick to my much
quicker version. Being the busy mother that I am I do not have an
entire day to dedicate to baking a loaf of bread. Plus my bread is so
yummy as is that I always have people asking me how I make. So I will
put my recipe and instructions here to send folks when they ask.
Without further ado, Marla’s version of French Bread.
1 1/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon yeast
Part of the secret of why my recipe is so fast is because I use a bread machine to do most of the work for me. I add all the ingredients in the order I have listed above, as per the machines instructions, and use the dough setting. If you are using a bread machine, add the ingredients according to its instructions. If you are going to make your dough by hand, combine the water, sugar, salt and yeast and let sit for five to ten minutes. Add in the flour and knead this dough for fifteen to twenty minutes. After that, place the dough in a floured bowl, cover with a towel and let rise in a warm spot for about forty five minutes.
Now that your dough has completed it’s first of two rises, place it on a floured surface and roll it out no wider than your widest baking sheet. I like to use a marble rolling pin for this for two reasons. One, the flour tends to stick less to a marble rolling pin. Two, the weight of a marble rolling pin is great for evenly rolling out any dough.
Once your dough is rolled out nice and flat, roll it up jelly roll style. After completing rolling up the dough be sure to pinch the dough closed. Your dough should be long and thin once you have come to this point.
Now that you have completed pinching the dough closed, spray down your baking sheet with a cooking spray (or your choice of greasing technique) and place the unbaked loaf seam side down. Make diagonal slash marks across the top of your loaf with a sharp knife, or a razor if you have one available. Put a cloth over the loaf and let rise for another twenty to thirty minutes.
Remove the cloth and place the baking sheet with the loaf on it into a preheated four hundred degree Fahrenheit oven for twenty minutes. Once the twenty minutes is up, just turn the oven off and let the bread sit there for another five to ten minutes, or until you serve your meal. A nice warm loaf of French bread is so great with dinner.
We almost always have bread left over and have discovered (surprise, surprise) that the next morning it makes for wonderful French toast. I’ll have to post a recipe for that later. You should also note that Trent is getting exceptionally good at handling a camera, a bunch of the pictures up there were taken by him.
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