Friday, July 24, 2009

Does your French Bread sing to you?

I knew I wanted some fresh bread since I had fresh compressed yeast to use up. Finding it in the grocery store when it isn't a holiday is a treat for me as a baker!

While trying to decide what to make, I was looking through my magazines, books and the web and ran across a blog on The Fresh Loaf that spoke about efforts to make french bread and how it "sang" when it came out of the oven. The blog referenced an episode of Baking with Julia (a PBS series where Julia cooked with the Master Chef's). On Julia's series, Danielle Forestier showed her version of french bread. The site had the recipe as well as video from the episode which walked through the entire process. The recipe was simple, only four ingredients: flour, water, salt and compressed yeast. Since the recipe specifically called for compressed yeast, this was the recipe I felt I must do.

Sat down and watched the full episode and decided to try making the bread with all purpose unbleached flour as I was out of bread flour and the hubby had the car at work when I decided to start. (I know, my kitchen pantry without bread flour!)

The recipe and instructions were clear and easy to follow and the result was a bread that sang when it came out of the oven! There is nothing so exciting as hearing your bread crackle as you place it on the boards to cool. It was a major sense of accomplishment and a picture of one of the loaves is below.




If you have the time, this process takes several hours but is so worth it. A light loaf with a very crispy crust. The loaves rose to a perfect level and rose out of the slashes and golden. It was hard to wait the required 20 minutes before cutting into them. The aroma even woke the sleeping hubby who wanted to know how soon he could have bread.

I was a bit disappointed on the crumb of the bread. While it was quite delicious, I didn't get the nice big and uneven air pockets that are traditional with a good french bread. Quite possibly due to my using all purpose flour instead of bread flour. I did end up with a full moist, delicate crumb to the bread. Again, a picture of the slices follows:



It was fun and an adventure. One that I certainly will take on again once I have fresh yeast and bread flour to see if I can get the crumb correct. Although I am by no means disappointed in this effort. Pass the butter please.
Tricia

1 comment:

  1. You have inspired me to look for fresh yeast to try it on my own. Thank you, it looks mouthwatering.

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