FRENCH BREAD EXTRAORDINAIRE

in her own words by bj, my friend

1 1/2 pound loaf bread machine - finishes out to one large round or oblong hand shaped loaf or two long baguettes.

1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons salt
1.5 pounds or 4 2/3 cups unbleached white bread flour

2 1/2 t. dry yeast 



Place ingredients in bread pan - set machine for dough cycle, start.

When dough cycle ends, machine will beep. I just leave the dough alone for as
long as 6 hours and just go do my life.

Give it a good punch and turn it out of the pan. I don't mess around with it  much when I turn it out   -   just plop it out on counter and start to shape.  Either shape into one large round loaf (flattening slightly with hands) or two long baguettes.

I hand shape and put on an unheated baking stone.

Alternatively you could use a cookie sheet -- just keep an eye on it so the bottom does not burn if you are using a cookie sheet. Cover loosely with dish towel –

Let rise again about 1 hour. If the dough is sticky, sprinkle with a little flour so you can work it - just a little - and remember -- you  are in charge of your dough!!!!

While bread is rising - preheat oven to 500 degrees.

Have a spray bottle full of water before you put this in the oven.

At this point I slash the bread with a very sharp knife or a razor deeply and IMMEDIATELY put it in the oven –

I am spraying with the water in the mister as I am doing this. The bread will look like it is collapsing from the slash - but it should come back up.
Just be sure you do not slash it until RIGHT BEFORE you place in oven.

Place in 500 degree oven, spraying oven and briefly lightly over bread with water in a mister. Set timer for 5 mins.

Spray well again, reduce heat to 450 degrees for 20 mins., spraying one or two more times with water early in the 20 mins.  Just open the oven and start spraying.

Remove bread from oven and remove from baking stone or cookie sheet - cool
on rack to cool. Wrap well in Saran and freeze.

Notes

I shape this into either a round loaf, an oblong loaf or two long baguettes
- -- this is our house bread -- i make this many times a week - we love it. It
is also fat free.

I actually spray more frequently than this - especially in that first five
mins and then the early part of the 20 mins. at 450. I do not like the pan
of water deal that some people use - i recommend the use of this mister. I
spray everywhere - the heating element, the sides of the oven - i am fast -

Just before putting bread in oven, brush the bread all over top and sides with egg white (I keep these in the fridge in a covered jar - they will last for a few weeks –

and sprinkle with sesame and/or poppy seeds, if desired.

You can also make it without slashing. You can also not do the egg white /seed thing and leave plain or give it a good sifting of flour on the top before cutting.

And my notes ... from Linda:

I follow this pretty closely, using a scale to weigh the flour. That can make a big difference. I also spray several times in the first 15 minutes. That makes a good crust on the outside, the one that I often hear cracking as it cools.  

And unless you are very strong, you will need a brad machine to knead the almost 5 cups of flour into a cup and a half of water.

I also finally bought a bread lame, a device that slashes the bread loaf just right to leave room for the bread to expand as it needs.

I make this for all occasions as it is wonderful with all food and it smells so good while baking. You all do enjoy.

THE SAGA OF THE BREAD, PART NEXT

You have to understand. I make a wonderful loaf of French Bread. I make a terrific Milk and Honey Bread. Years ago, when I taught in Quanah, I made wonderful sourdough bread which I often took to school for my students. And beautiful sourdough rolls.


Thus, when King Arthur advertised its New England sourdough starter from 1763, I wanted to  once more bake beautiful sourdough rolls. They can be so lovely in the morning. And so began my attempts to reproduce what I had baked so many years ago. No longer having that recipe and having no idea who might have it, I turned to the Internet. From that and the King Arthur Flour website, I collected about 20 sourdough bread recipes and then chose three or four to try.


I have written about my earlier attempts with the sourdough starter and how none of them was what I was looking for; but nothing was as "blogworthy" as this last attempt at sourdough bread. Selecting an aptly named Old San Francisco Sourdough Bread recipe, I took the starter from the refrigerator Tuesday morning and went through the sequence of throwing away a portion, feeding the rest with a half cup of water and a cup of flour, stirring it together, and leaving it several hours to proof.


Now, the truth is that you usually leave the starter to ripen for about four hours; and although I knew that I had a very busy day ahead, I thought I could handle it all. And off I went to dash across town to the bank and back to Central Market for fresh produce and extra "goodies." Of course, everything took much more time than I had planned; and by the time I had all of the food in the house Tuesday afternoon, it was later than I had planned.


Of course, friends stopped by to chat, the telephone rang, I needed to chart my eating on MYPLATE.com, I was hungry, and the doorbell rang. By the time I got back to the kitchen to wash the various fruits and vegetables and package them for storage, the starter had been ripening to the point that I feared it might be overly ripe! Have you ever smelled sourdough starter? Have you ever smelled bad sourdough starter? Ripe is NOT the right word. And I was sinking. I had not eaten in hours. I was hungry. I knew that the blood glucose was down. I wanted food.


And I was tired. Very tired. With Fibro, there are rules about just what you should do in one day. One of those rules says that grocery shopping should be done on a day when you do nothing else at all. This wasn't going to be that day. I had things to do. I had to eat. And so I took another look at the ripe starter and it was still quite fine. I hastily prepared one of those meals that I do when I have no time and I have to eat: a slice of roast turkey and canned green beans warmed together in the oven. It's fast and it tastes good as I season it well. That taken care of, I began dealing with the produce; and about two in the morning, I turned to the starter. It smelled good; it looked fine. All was going to be wonderful. There would be fresh bread tomorrow.


Running to the computer, I dug into the recipe collection there: documents>written documents>recipes>bread>sourdough breads>SAN FRANCISCO STYLE SOURDOUGH BREAD. It was simple. I could do that one in the bread machine. That's how I do my French bread: set it up at night to make dough and leave it there to rise about six hours, wake up, take out the beautiful dough, make out the bread, set it to rise, set an alarm, take a nap, wake, and bake bread. That's how I did it forty years ago; that's how I would do it now.


And I went to sleep. (If you remember how my sleeping med works, I take a dose, sleep 4 hours, wake, take a second dose, sleep about three hours, and wake again.) I woke a little after noon, feeling terrible, stumbling around like fibro people do on a bad day. I went into the kitchen and remembered what I had forgotten as I slept all through the night: there sat the bread machine and I knew there was bread dough inside. But after sitting there for ten or eleven hours, what sort of state it would be in I was about to discover.


I could see on the sides of the machine bread pan where it had risen up and fallen back. That might be OK. But the dough looked funny. Something didn't look right. It wasn't as much bread dough as it was a batter of some sort. I read the instructions to knead the dough and shape it into a round boule. The stuff in that bread pan was not going to shape into anything.  Perhaps, I should reread the recipe.


Well, first of all, for this one recipe using a sourdough starter, the instructions said to measure the starter cold, straight from the refrigerator. That would certainly make a difference. In other words, instead of using one and a half cups of cold starter, I had used one and a half cups of ripened starter. That would make a big difference as the dough went together. Oh my ... 


And so, I laid out the silicone mat on which I knead and shape and all that, covered it with a layer of bench flour into which to pour whatever it was in that bread machine pan, and did just that. And that dough did pour out onto the mat ... as if it were batter! Can't you just see that thick batter sprawling out all over the mat? It spread faster than I could contain it. What was I going to do with that mess? Scoop it up and into the prepared bread pan? What would that bake into?


As I looked at it, inching its way to the edge of the counter, I decided to add more flour and perhaps work it into the mass to make it more like dough. I folded the mat over the creeping mass of whatever it was and turned to get the flour. As I picked up the scoop inside the bread flour container, I read the handle which read 3/4 cup! Well, another error there in the exhaustion of the night before: for every cup of flour the recipe had called for, I had put in only three-fourths of a cup. I was a cup off what was called for. No wonder, I had such a mess of flour paste there on the counter. What on earth could I do to save this?


I worked a cup of flour into the stuff there, poured it into the bread pan, covered it, set it to rise for an hour, and left it to do its thing. I had things to do. But I felt so bad. I wanted only to sleep or sit and stare at the TV or anything that was nothing. I came to the computer. Might as well read some of my email. Somehow, it was 5:30. The TV news came and went and I continued on the computer. The Olympics came on and I got so wrapped up in what I was seeing that I forgot all about watching American Idol. Besides, it was now about 9:30 and I was hungry.


Funny. Coming down the hall heading for the kitchen, I could smell something in the oven. The oven! The thoughts washed over me: I turned on the oven to heat in order to bake the bread. The bread! I had again forgotten the bread! As I looked at it, I could tell that this was going to be very interesting. It had risen to the top of the bread pan and no higher. I suppose that the yeast had been completely worn out the night before. Oh well. I might as well bake it. And so I did. And so I did.


I have never before taken a fresh loaf of bread from the oven and not wanted to cut it right then while it was hot, wanted to slather butter all over it and eat it right then. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with this stuff. Do you want to know what it was like? Well, not bad. Not too good, but not bad. It had the consistency of batter bread, except maybe twice as heavy. And it needed more salt ... and I had used more than the recipe called for. 


 And this morning, I made toast from it. Not bad. Still not good enough to spend my carbohydrate count on it. I think that there is something wrong with the recipe. I need to stay with the King Arthur recipes. I shall toss this experiment in confusion and make a good loaf of my French Bread Extraordinaire. I'll post the recipe for that one so that you all  can share the good bread. This is a French bread that you will want to eat straight from the oven. It is crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. Sometimes, you can hear the crust cracking as it cools just out from the oven. Oh, it is so good. 


A good diagonal slice across one end and I get the "Pope's nose," the very best part of the bread and this one I will slather with lots of sweet cream butter, maybe even some apricot jam ... or honey that somehow will get on my elbows while I am eating. Sometimes, it is so good that I have to have another thick slice. You are invited to join me with that one also.