French Bread (Attempt No. 2)
I will not post Attempt No. 1 here as it is not really worth the space. Attempt No. 2 is really Attempt No. 1 minus one cup of flour plus one tablespoon of olive oil.
My children love French Bread. This is the main reason I am intent to learn how to make a fairly decent French Bread. After reading a number of articles on the history of the bread and how-to tips, I have realized that with a little bit of ingenuity, making French Bread is not quite such an impossible task.
Ingredients:
5 cups of flour
2 cups luke warm water
2 packets active dry yeast
1. 5 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp. olive oil
Procedure:
Basic dough making. Refer to pan de sal procedure.
After dough has risen and doubled, punch down and divide into two (or three). Flatten, roll, and pinch seams. Set on baking sheets sprinkled with corn meal (seam down.) Let rise until doubled. Make diagonal cuts on the bread after the second rising. You may opt to brush with a combination of egg white and water.
When dough has almost doubled, pre-heat oven to 450F. Set a pan of water on bottom of oven. This is essential in getting that crusty exterior.
Bake for fifteen minutes or until done (bread should sound hollow when tapped.) I would recommend spraying the oven with fine mist of water every three minutes until done.
Notes:
1. I would probably add a quarter cup flour next time as it was difficult to handle the dough even though it had already developed gluten from kneading. I would not go over six cups flour with this recipe since that was the amount of flour used for Attempt No. 1 which produced a very dense and bland bread.
2. Make sure that slashes on the bread are made after doubling.
3. The recipe above produced a chewy center with a crusty and nutty exterior.
