FRENCH BREAD
INGREDIENTS:
approximately
6‑7 C bread flour
2 packages
(or about 2 T) of dry yeast
1 T salt
3 C warm
water
cornmeal
INSTRUCTIONS:
Put 6 C of
flour in a bowl and mix in yeast and salt.
Add the water and stir up. Turn out
onto a floured surface and knead adding only as much of the remaining cup of
flour as necessary to keep the dough from being unhandleable (the less you need
to add, the better the bread will be!).
Knead very well until really elastic.
Put in an ungreased bowl, cover with a dish towel, and let rise
until doubled or tripled. (I believe
that it is important that no fat of any type ever be introduced to get as good
a crust as possible.) Sprinkle two ungreased
cookie sheets liberally with corn meal.
Punch down the dough, turn out onto a floured surface, cut into four
pieces. Form a baguette from each
quarter of the dough in the following way: pat out dough into a rough rectangle
or oval whose longest dimension is approximately the length of the cookie sheet. Roll up tightly along the long dimension and
pinch to seal the roll all along the length.
(This way of forming the loaf is important; it creates a tensioned skin
of the elastic dough which helps keep the loaf from spreading out on the pan
while rising and baking.) Place two
loaves on each pan, cover with plastic wrap or waxed paper, and let rise until
doubled or tripled. Preheat the oven to
425. Make diagonal slashes with a razor
blade in the loaves and brush all over with cold water. (Get them really wet, this results in a good
crust.) You will need to put the two
pans on two shelves. Bake for 10 minutes
and change shelves for the two pans.
Bake for 10 minutes and take loaves off the pans and put right on the
higher shelf. Bake for 10 more minutes. Cool on baking racks. Freeze any loaves which you will not consume
within 24 hours.