Nom-Able

Making bread is one of those things that I always imagined was incredibly difficult, that only experienced bakers and the Amish could do. But, then the day comes when you really want some bread — some nice, crusty French bread — and you really can’t justify driving all the way to the nearest grocery store to buy some. Especially not when the weather is incredibly shitty.

This leaves an inevitable dilemma: you want the bread now, but you don’t want to drive to the grocery store. I guess it’ll just be a breadless evening, right?

A quick google search yielded no results for quick and satisfying crusty bread. I headed over to The Fresh Loaf, a site that belongs to the husband of a friend of mine — no luck. In fact, the one two hour recipe posted there was quickly ridiculed by the more experienced artisanal bread makers as terrible, though few if any had tried it, and I was almost at the point of giving up hope when a chain of links lead me to a recipe — with photos to prove it could be done — for 2 and a half hour French bread.

Naturally, I was skeptical. A recent mailing from Wegmans included information on their new Italian bread, which they were now letting rise 24 hours instead of 2, to give it an authentic taste and crust. I was practically heartbroken, but my desire for crusty bread won over my feelings of doubt and lack of self confidence. The ingredients list was sufficiently short enough to quell any remaining feelings of wasteful remorse instilled in childhood. If I screw this up, it’s only flour, water, and yeast. No pain no gain.

Now, I’ve always had a bit of bad luck with yeast and it’s offspring. Pretzels I tried to make in Girl Scouts as a child always ended up being thin and crunch and ridiculed by my Philadelphian classmates who knew what a soft pretzel should look and taste like — and naturally were able to make theirs perfect. An attempt at pizza dough in 1999 left me with dough that never rose properly, and thin, cardboard like crusts. I pretty much figured from then on out that I wasn’t good at this whole playing with a living ingredient thing, so I just gave up.

Now, this was my chance, my opening into a whole new world of yeast-based doughs. I was going to give it one more chance, one last attempt before forever abandoning any ideas of being a bread maker.

Flaky on the outside, chewy and soft on the inside — it was perfect.

Three-Hour French Bread

4 cups bread flour

2 tsp active quick rising dry yeast

2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups warm water

1. Put 1/4 cup of bread flour on your clean counter top and reserve. Place remaining 3 3/4 cups bread flour in your mixer bowl. Spoon the yeast on one side of the bowl, and the salt on the other side. Pour in the warm water and with your regular mixer paddle, mix on low speed until the dough comes together in a mass. Switch to the dough hook. Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Dough should clear the sides but stick to the bottom. If it is too sticky, add 1 T of flour at a time. If too dry, add 1 T of water to dough to adjust. After 2 minutes, let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

2. Turn the mixer on again and mix for 3 minutes. Take the dough out and place on the counter. Remember that 1/4 cup of flour that we reserved? We’ll use it now. As you knead the dough by hand, incorporate more flour as you need. You might not need it all. Knead by hand until the dough is very satiny, smooth, tight and formed into a nice, compact ball.

Place this dough in a large lightly oiled bowl (I use Pam spray). Turn dough over so that all sides have a thin coating of oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set in warm place for 1 1/2 hours. Dough should almost double in size. Punch dough down and form back into a ball. Poke your finger on the surface – the dough should give into the pressure and slowly creep back up.

3. About 1 hour into the rest stage, preheat your oven to 450F (convection 425F). Place your pizza stone, inverted baking sheet or covered cast iron pot into the oven to heat up.

4. Ok, here’s the fun part. Cut the dough into half – you’ll shape one half at a time (keep the other piece under wraps) Pick up the dough – stretch it out until it forms a big rectangle. On your countertop dusted with flour, fold over the ends. Now do a little “karate chop” lengthwise down the middle of the bread and stretch out the long ends again. Fold over in half. The karate chop helps get the middle tucked inside. Pinch all sides shut. This is important – you want to make sure that all ends including the short ends are pinched tightly to create a seal. This allows the bread to rise & expand up and out evenly. If the bread looks a little lopsided, you can try to fix it by letting it rest 5 minutes and gently stretching it out again. Just don’t knead the dough again – you’ll pop all the beautiful gas that took 1.5 hours to create!

5. Turn the bread over so that its seam side down. Cover the loaf with a damp kitchen towel. Repeat with the other dough halve. Leave the loaves to rest on your well-floured pizza peel or cutting board for 30 minutes. After resting, take a sharp paring knife and make 3-4 shallow, diagonal slashes on the surface of the loaf. This allows the steam in the bread to escape so that it expands evenly during the baking process.

When you are ready to bake, remove your baking vessel. Carefully slide the gorgeous loaf into or onto your baking vessel. Get a 1/2 cup of water ready next to the stove. Open the stove, put your bread in the oven and throw the water on the oven floor. (Ed. Note: I put a jelly roll pan on the bottom rack of a cold oven and then preheated the sheet in the oven; when it was time to bake, I put my baking stone on the top, and threw the water on to the jelly roll pan.) Immediately close the oven door. This creates your steam. -> Bake 20-25 minutes. Check temperature of the bread – internal should be 190-210F. Remove and let cool before cutting into it.