There’s nothing tastier than fresh baked French bread. Especially when it’s hot out of the oven.
Over the last year or so, I’ve started playing around (I call it playing around because I haven’t mastered it) with baking. First I worked on homemade pie crust then homemade biscuits followed by homemade pizza crust and then I moved on to homemade cinnamon rolls and even pretzels.
Baking is a whole lot different from regular cooking. When I cook, it’s a little of this and a little of that and play around with flavors and techniques and different ingredients to create new flavors and dishes. With baking, you must follow a recipe. Exactly. It’s more challenging—but when you get good results you’re ecstatic. When you don’t get good results, you’re bummed out but determined to try again. The good news is that the results are rarely a disaster and are still pretty tasty.
And Carolyn dearly loves fresh baked goods. It doesn’t matter—biscuits, pies, rolls, whatever. So she was tickled to death to have me trying out bread. The first couple of times I baked a loaf of French bread, we managed to devour the whole thing in one sitting. She doesn’t quite get it when I’m not totally satisfied because I’m looking for the perfect loaf. That’s OK I guess because that quest for the perfect loaf means that I’ll keep baking and we’ll keep eating it.
So, here’s a basic recipe that I’ve been using. I’m still working on the technique and in getting better results, but this is definitely not bad…not bad at all. It’s 4 simple ingredients, some patience and try, try, try again.
Cheap Bastid’s Fresh Baked French Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 envelope rapid rise yeast
- ¾ tsp salt
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
It doesn’t really matter if you put your yeast in a bowl with the water and salt for 5 or 10 minutes first or if you just put everything in a bowl all at once and then pour in the water. Whichever you prefer. I’ve tried it both ways and there really doesn’t seem to be any difference.
Stir everything together really well. The dough is going to be just a bit wet but shouldn’t be “gooey” sticking all over your hands. If it does, sprinkle a tablespoon or so of flour in it and work it a bit before removing it from the bowl to knead.
Take the dough from the bowl and put it on a floured work surface—your kitichen counter or a bread board. Knead the dough using the heels or palms of your hands. You’re going to knead the dough for about 10 minutes in order to work up the gluten strands that are the foundation of your bread. About 7-8 minutes into this process you should start to feel the dough changing and becoming smoother and silky. Give it a couple more minutes of kneading—you’re almost there.
Form the dough into a ball and put it into a greased mixing bowl. (I use some margarine applied with a paper napkin, but cooking spray works well too). Put a towel over the bowl and leave it in a fairly warm place to rise (one thing I do is to turn the oven on high for about 30 seconds, then turn it off and put the bowl into the oven with the door closed. This gives it a good place to do its thing and I’m not too tempted to check it all the time). Let the dough rise for about 45 minutes to an hour—until it has doubled in size.
When it has doubled in size, “punch the dough down” and re-knead it for a couple of minutes to reactivate the yeast and form it into a loaf about 14 inches long. Flatten the dough a bit, then roll it up taking pains to seal the “seam” along the length of the loaf and at the ends. Put the loaf onto a greased baking sheet, cover it up and put it back in the oven to proof for about a half hour or so.
When done, take the loaf out of the oven and pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. While the oven is pre-heating, take a sharp knife and cut 3 or 4 slashes into the top, each one about ¼ inch deep.
One other thing to do in the oven is to put an old, shallow pan on the rack which is under the rack you’re going to use for baking the bread. Let the pan get good and hot while pre-heating. Fill a cup with about half to 2/3 cup of water. When it’s time to put the bread in the oven, slide the baking sheet in and then pour the cup of water into the empty hot pan so it will create some steam the first few minutes the bread is baking.
Now, bake your loaf of bread for about 35 minutes. Then take it out, let cool just a bit and dig in. Hopefully, everything’s gone right, and you’ve got a tasty first effort at making fresh baked French bread. And if it’s not quite perfect—it’s still going to be pretty tasty. And you’ll get addicted to fresh baked bread and trying to make it better.
This recipe is enough for one loaf. You can double it and make 2 loaves which you can bake now or you can bake one now and refrigerate the other for tomorrow.
If you want rolls, divide the dough into a dozen balls after the first rise. Dust your greased baking sheet with cornmeal if you want. Let the rolls rise until doubled and then bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for 15 minutes.
This takes a bit of time but it’s relaxing. It engages your brain in a different way and you get to both see and taste the results of your efforts.
The Cheap Bastid Test: Quite frankly, this is a bit time consuming—figure 3 hours start to finish. But it’s worth it. The total cost of the ingredients for a loaf of bread is about 75 cents. What’s that? About a third the cost of buying it? But the real value is in the making and the tasting of that which you have made.
That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!
Here are some terrific tips for making homemade fresh French Bread:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/lessons/tentipsforbetterfrenchbread
