French Bread

French bread

Not that French when you make it in Celbridge, but nice all the same. Getting yeast bread right takes quite a bit of practice, but I will try to point out some of the pitfalls.
The main differences between this and a basic white yeast bread are that this has 3 risings and steam is used in the oven to give the characteristic crust of French bread.

Ingredients:

250g Strong white flour

200ml tepid water (use half boiling and half tap and the temperature will be fine)

7g Sachet of dried yeast

Quarter tsp of salt

Method:

Add the yeast to the water and give it a stir. Add this to half of the flour and salt in a large bowl. Give it a good stir. It should be the consistency of very thick pancake batter at this stage. Cover it in cling film and let it stand for about 3 hours at room temperature.

It will have increased in size by about a factor of 3 and started to collapse in on itself. Ready for the second stage. Don't be afraid to leave this for longer than the 3 hours. Yeast bread involves plenty of patience and rushing it will give you a brick loaf. That said, try not to lose heart if you get bad results. Figure out what happened (ask a question here) and try again. It is worth getting this right. Then again your first attempt might be boulangerie stuff.

Next add the rest of the flour. Mix it in and use your hand to roll it into a ball. You may have to add some more flour to make sure that it is workable. Lightly flour a work surface and knead the bread for about 15 minutes. If the mixture gets a little too sticky dust it with some flour, but try not to overdo it. Wetter dough is better. The 15 minute knead is hard work, but very enjoyable. Make sure your hands are clean and sleeves rolled up before you start. I much prefer to do this by hand rather than use a mixer.

Now put the ball of dough back into the bowl you took it from. Cover it with some lightly oiled cling film and put it in a warm place. I use the hot press, but a warm kitchen is fine. Leave it for about 3 hours. You can see why it is so difficult to have this stuff for breakfast and why bakers get up in the middle of the night.

Following that rising the surface of the dough should be smooth and soft. If you press your finger lightly into it the depression should remain after you remove your finger. In the bottom right of this picture you can see the mark of my finger.

Next you need to shape the loaf. This dough will work in pretty much any shape - plaits, mini rolls or baguette shapes. Here are some rolls that I made a few weeks ago using a recipe very similar to this:

You can also use a lightly oiled loaf tin.

If you are doing baguette shapes you will need a clean tea towel and a large baking tray. Fold the towel into 3 pleats on the baking tray. The pleats will act as trenches for your bread to do its final rise in. Without the pleats to constrain the dough it will just all spread out flat. Not very baguette shaped.

Cover the pleats in plenty of flour. Break the ball of dough into 3 roughly equal parts. Roll each one out into a sausage shape. Lift up one end of one of the sausages and fold it into the centre. Press it down hard so that is sticks. Now do this with the other end - pressing it on top of the first finger mark. Lift this folded sausage into one of the pleats in the tea towel. Repeat this for the remaining 2 dough sausages. Finally cover the whole lot in another clean tea towel and leave for its final rising.
Bake for 25 minutes in the centre of a hot oven - about gas mark 8. Steam is used to give the crust to real French baguettes. To simulate this in my humble domestic cooker I put a pot of boiling water on the bottom of the oven. The crusts turned out looking very nice.