French bread

Hello everyone,

When I started traveling around Asia, one of the first thing that I missed as a good french was: Bread. Some people say France has the best cuisine in the world, I won't go that far, in fact I confess that there are many types of food I would prefer over the French one. This being said, I however just love bread from my homeland, and as, after about 5 years in Asia, I never found a remotely decent bread in any of the places I've been; no, lets be honest: most of the time the bread was rubbish, really (from my perspective). So I tried to bake my own.

I had my doubts when my wife suggested me to bake my own bread, I was like "Are you crazy? It takes years to train a proper baker, and last time I tried it was just inedible!"; and I refused to even try for quite a while, until I eventually cave in and give it a try, expecting to fail.
And fail I did... quite a few times; to the point that I even gave up at some point before picking it up again. I kinda tend to be lazy when I see tedious cooking steps like "knead 3 mn" and such and therefore I try to go fast or even skip the whole step; and it usually doesn't matter... But in this recipe, every step must be done properly for a good bread. But eventually I understood that there is no shortcut for this recipe and I managed to cook a bread that does taste and feel like the bread I love. And today I am going to share how to achieve such result.

Preparation: 5 mn	Cooking: 40 mn	Total time: 4h45
Rest time: 4 h	Difficulty: Average

A delicious French bread, crusty outside and soft inside.

Ingredients:

2-4 people
250 g wheat flour
150 ml water
1 tablespoon of salt
10 g yeast

Preparation:

Step 1

1. In a big bowl mix all the ingredients and keep kneading the dough until it looks homogeneous and feels slightly sticky (3 mn or so)


2. Cover the bowl and let it rest for about 3 h minimum. The dough should double in size.





Step 2

3. Knead vigorously the dough again with floured hands and shape a ball of dough (or more but it will affect the cooking time and of course the size of your bread).


4. Nick the top of the bread and let it rise a second time for 30 mn.





Step 4

5. Preheat the oven at 160°C in convection mode.


6. Put your bread in the oven at mid height for about 60 mn; the crust need to start getting yellow-brownish. The longer you cook it the drier it will be and therefore the longer you can keep it.


7. Once cooked, let it rest a bit on a grid so the vapor can escape.

Advice:
The bread is best eaten withing 2 h after being taken out of the oven; eat it while still warm; it's better!
I find that the lower your cooking temperature is the thinner your crust will be.

The bread once cooked

Do:

You may add dried fruits or other ingredients in the bread if you want to flavor it (walnuts, figs and olives are my favorites (not all together of course)).

You may also add a bit of honey if you want a sweet taste (works well with dates and probably figs) but only after the first rise is completed.
You may add some lemon juice at step one to neutralize the yeasty taste if this one bothers you. A teaspoon should suffice for the indicated amount of ingredients.

Don't:

Add any kind of sugar until the first rise is completed as it might give a small alcoholic taste.
Be stingy on the salt otherwise your bread will taste bland.

Enjoy!

Cooking daddy