3 Jul 2008
French Bread
Here is my first attempt to bake one of the breads in Daniel Leader’s
Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe’s Best Artisan Bakers. As usual, I had a problem with following instructions, and I had to modify the recipe a bit: Instead of 500g of all purpose flour, I used 400g of AP and 100g of whole wheat graham flour. I did not want to replace too much flour with whole wheat to not change the character of the bread and the consistency of the dough too much.
And, because of time constraints, I had to “rush” the whole process a bit by shaving off a few minutes of every step. The temperature on that day (it was very hot) may have worked to my advantage because the dough did rise a lot faster.
French bread is best fresh, and I did not want to eat three loafs within an hour of baking them, so I also cut short the baking time a bit – hence the somehow pale look of the finished bread.
That allows me to freeze the loafs and then just pop them into my convection toaster oven for 8 to 10 minutes and have delicious fresh french bread.
Hi Karl!
You breath looks delicious 🙂
I receive your message on my coconut homede yogurt.
At the moment I don’t have much time to translate it cause I am at work.
As soon as I am back home I’ll forward you the translation, since I already translated it before to another reader.
Thanks for stopping by Delicias & Companhia.
Manuela
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:32 ampermalink
Hey, Karl, great looking bread there! Nice oven spring!
I love the idea of par-baking the bread. Not sure it would work for me since my freezer is too small, but still, great idea.
Laurie Ashton Farook
May 18th, 2009 at 9:11 pmpermalink