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The Decent French Bread Recipe
By perryd | December 18, 2007
I thought I’d share the recipe for the Decent French Bread that I raved about in an earlier post. It’s based on Julia Child’s master recipe, with some slight modifications. This creates a delicious French bread that is very close to what you’d find in a Parisian boulangerie but, like most bread, is very simple to make. Many people will stare in disbelief when you tell them that you make your own bread, often with an astounded, “You knead it by hand?” For some reason we have it in our heads that making bread is a long, laborious process that will result in gladiator-like arm muscles. You’ll soon discover that kneading is a ten-minute process that can be done (literally) with one hand.
The recipe will make three twelve-inch baguettes (more correctly they are batards, but who wants to say that they’ve made fresh batards? Baguette sounds a lot tastier).
Equipment you’ll need:
A large bowl to mix and rise in. It should hold at least 12 cups. I use a KitchenAid mixer bowl
A surface to knead on. A Silpat or a cookie sheet works well
A clean dish towel (the less nubbly the better) to rest the dough on
A large pizza stone for the oven (or you can use a cookie sheet)
A wooden peel to move the formed baguettes around on (they often are packaged with the stones)
Seven to eight hours of time
For the flour, use a good quality all-purpose flour such as King Arthur unbleached. Bread flour will work, too, but it will result in a chewier loaf. When measuring, scoop up flour with your measuring cup and sweep the excess off with the handle of a spatula.
Ingredients:
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups warm (not hot) water
1 package (1 tsp) dry yeast
Time
1. Add the yeast to the warm water and give it a few stirs with your spatula. The idea is to dissolve the dry yeast into the water. No need to whip it, just stir it around until the yeast is nice and soupy.
2. Whisk together the salt and flour in a large bowl. I use the mixing bowl from a KitchenAid mixer, which serves as the rising container, too. The salt is there for a little flavor but also to slow the yeast down a bit. Straight salt will kill the yeast cells, which is why we mix it up well before the yeast goes in.
3. Pour the yeasty water into the flour. With your spatula, mix the flour and water together until it forms a ragged mass. It won’t look at all like dough at this point, just a scraggly bunch of damp flour. There will likely be loose, dry flour present…don’t worry, it will be incorporated during kneading. The mass should roughly hold together. Drier is better, so avoid the temptation to add water to make it more dough-like. It will get moister as you knead. Turn the mass out onto a surface that you can knead on. I use a large Silpat, but just about anything will do. Let the dough mixture sit for a few minutes while you clean your bowl and spatula.
4. Time to knead the dough. Using the heel of your hand (I’m right-handed and knead with my right), push the dough at the edges of your pile down and out, in and L-shaped motion. This is similar to the fraisage that we do with butter doughs such as pate choux or pate feuillete, it’s something of a smearing motion. Gather up the dough, and push down on the center of the pile, then give it the smear. Fold the edges of the dough into the center and repeat the push-and-smear motion. You’ll be doing this for about ten minutes…take a look at the clock now. Continue to fold and push, fold and push. Once in a while pick up the whole mass and slap it back down on the counter. Whack! The dough will change consistency during the kneading. You’ll feel it get a little moister, and just a touch sticky. After about five minutes the dough will start to push back as you knead. You’re getting close! It will be smooth and stretchy, in fact it feels a little like soft rubber at this point. After the ten minutes have passed, shape the dough into a flattened ball and let it sit for a few minutes.
5. Dry out your big bowl, if it’s still damp from washing, and give it a light coat of oil on the inside. I use a spray can of canola oil…you just want a thin film so that the dough doesn’t stick. A few quick spritzes will do the trick. The dough is going to just about triple in size, so if you started out with a rather small bowl, get a larger one now and oil it up.
6. Return to your beautiful, silky, dough and admire it for a moment. This started out as that scraggly mess not that long ago! Push it around a bit into a flat oval, just to give it another minute of kneading, and then gather it back into a ball and plop it into your big bowl. Place plastic wrap over the top of the bowl, and write down the time. I write the time on a yellow sticky note and attach it to the bowl. We do this because you aren’t going to visit the dough for a long time and you don’t want to forget when it went into the rising bowl.
7. Put the bowl into a cool place. 60 to 65 degrees is ideal. The cooler temperature will slow the yeast down and let it develop that wonderful nutty flavor that we’re looking for. If the temperature is too high, the dough will rise quickly but will develop a slightly sour, fermented flavor and its body will not be as full as what we want for this bread. The chewiness comes from a long, slow rise. Come back in two and a half to three hours.
8. After about three hours, the dough will have inflated to nearly triple its original size and be a light, spongy mass. Sprinkle a little flour on your kneading surface and turn the dough out onto it. If the dough looks damp, sprinkle just a bit of flour on top of it. Not too much, just a light dusting! Clean out your bowl if it needs it and give it a little oil, just like the first time. With both hands, push the dough out into a flat oval about a foot in diameter. The size doesn’t matter, as you’re just deflating the dough and giving it a light handling to redistribute the yeast. Fold the top, bottom, and two sides into the center, flip the dough over, and tuck the sides in with the edges of your hands to make a flattened ball. Place the dough back into the bowl, replace the plastic wrap, and write the time down. Come back in two hours.
9. After two hours your dough will have re-inflated to triple-size. Sprinkle a little flour on your kneading surface and turn the dough out onto it. Sprinkle a little flour on top of the dough. It’s spongy and light and already smells delicious! Push the dough out into a rough rectangle.
10. With a pastry cutter or butter knife, cut the dough into three equal pieces and set them aside. This is a good time to clean your bowl. The pieces need to rest just a minute or two.
11. Place a cloth dishtowel on a cookie sheet. Use a smooth dishtowel, as a nubbly one will push marks into the rising bread. The formed baguettes will rest for an hour or two on the dishtowel as they rise. Sprinkle a good amount of flour onto the dishcloth and rub it in with your hands. This will prevent the dough from sticking to the cloth. You’ve just made a little couche for your bread.
12. Take one of the three pieces of dough and place it on your kneading surface. Gently press it into a rectangle about 10 inches on the long side, and five or six inches on the short side. The long side should end up facing you. Resist the urge to tug at it too much..what we’ll be doing is gently stretching the rubbery skin of the dough into shape so that it will hold together as it rises and bakes. If you tug and tear, the rubbery skin will break and you’ll end up with a misshapen loaf.
13. Fold the top of the rectangle down to the bottom edge of the dough, and seal where the edges meet by pressing along the seam with your thumbs.
14. Roll the dough away from you so that the newly created seam is at the top, Gently flatten out the dough and push it back into a rectangle. Using the edge of your hand, make a shallow trough in the center along the length of the dough. Again, fold the top edge to the bottom and seal it with your thumbs.
15. Roll the dough away from you slightly and push gently along the seam to make sure that it is sealed. As you do this, tug gently to stretch the rubbery skin of the dough, but not so hard that you tear it. Tuck in the open ends of the little baguette and seal them with your thumbs.
16. The baguette should be about 12 inches long. If it isn’t, roll and tug gently to get it to that length.
17. Place the baguette seam side up on the dishcloth, over near the far edge. Fold the far edge of the cloth up so that if forms a wall about the same height as the dough, and then do the same on the near side of the baguette. The dough will be resting between two walls of cloth.
18. Repeat steps 12 to 17 with the remaining pieces of dough. Make cloth walls for each. In the end you’ll have cloth-bread-cloth-bread-cloth-bread-cloth. Fold the rest of the dishtowel over the baguettes and write down the time.
19. In one hour, warm the oven to 450 degrees. If you have a baking / pizza stone, put it in now. A stone is inexpensive and really helps the bread bake properly. If you don’t have a stone, you may use a cookie sheet. In that case, in the steps below, just transfer each loaf on to the cookie sheet, then put the sheet with the bread into the preheated oven.
20. An hour and a half after you put the last baguette to bed in step 18, take a look at them. They should have risen to about double their starting size, and look full and ripe. If they aren’t give them another half hour or so and look again. Once they have doubled in size, they are ready for slashing and baking.
21. Starting with one of the outside breads on the cookie sheet/cloth, roll the dough gently onto a floured wooden peel (a thin piece of wood used to transfer the bread to the oven…you can get them along with the pizza stone or buy them individually). The bread should end up seam side down with a minimum of handling. It should not deflate during this process. Picking the baguette up will almost certainly deflate it…you really want to roll it gently. With a very sharp knife or razor, make three diagonal cuts, about a quarter of an inch deep, across the top of the bread. Gently slide the bread onto the baking stone in the oven.
22. Repeat step 21 for the remaining baguettes. Doing them one at a time gives you much better control over the bread as you move and slash it.
23. Once all three breads are in the oven on the stone, give them a good misting of water along their tops. I use a plastic spray bottle with an adjustable nozzle, on the mist setting. The water will coagulate the dough along the top a bit and help produce a lovely brown, crispy crust. It also keeps the slashes moist for a while so that they don’t immediately brown.
24. Set your oven timer for 10 minutes.
25. After two minutes, give the bread another misting of water, and again two minutes after that.
26. When the timer goes off, turn the heat down to 400 degrees and set the timer for 10 minutes.
27. When the timer goes off this time, take a look at the bread. If the tops are turning dark brown, place a sheet of aluminum foil over them to slow the browning down. Set the time for ten more minutes.
28. When the timer goes off…the bread has been in the oven a total of 30 minutes… bring it out with oven mitts and place on a wooden cutting board to cool. You’ll hear a lovely crackling sound as the bread sings to you while it cools down.
29. Once the bread is cool enough to hold firmly, go ahead and try some! It should have a crisp, crunchy crust and a chewy, nutty consistency and taste. Store unused bread in a paper…not plastic…bag for up two two days. There are no preservatives in this bread so it won’t keep much longer than that. Anyway, it’s so good that it isn’t likely to be around for that long!
The first time you attempt this, it will feel a little awkward. The second time will feel much more natural. There’s no hurrying about in this recipe, or anything complicated, and your total interaction with the dough is about fifteen minutes. The rest of the time the dough is just sitting there peacefully rising.
Topics: Food |
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