It is a Chris and Julia moment... French bread with the French chef (Part Un) Oh, and a quick follow up/redemption!

(Bloggers note- this is another one of my older posts, but with some good tips, and a real time update!)

    I was wandering on Youtube the other day and stumbled across some old episodes of "The French Chef with Julia Child."  I thought,  "well, I could use some French training" and chose the first one along,  Authentic French bread.  Being a LOVER of all things gluten, I watched along, learned a couple of new things, and decided that I would try out some of her ideas and techniques. So here is my first authentic French bread attempt.

My family loves a long loaf of crusty bread- they frequently can be seen brandishing the food item as a sword prior to me rescuing it for my meal- and yes, I have served many a broken loaf of crusty bread due to this activity. (Now you will know what went on in my kitchen when I serve you a broken loaf of French bread!)LOL

Anyhow, all of the ingredients went into the handy Kitchenaid- (which the helpful hubby pointed out was so, so authentic French chef (haha)). After the yeast had completely liquefied

 (there was a pointer I did not know- I always just gave the yeast a few moments to poof up.. it really does better if you let it get going!) To the right is after the first kneading took place.  I have the Julia Child cookbooks and followed her directions to a T.  She was really quite onto something. She nailed each time that the texture would change- and I learned that patience is a virtue in breadmaking!  Directly below is the first rising of the bread.  The little red mark is Julia's instruction to mark out 3x's the quantity of the dough that you have- so that you can be assured that it has risen enough. Not quite the "fly by the seat of my pants" technique that I was used to, but I was trying to really follow the flow. 



After not one, but two full rises, I finally was taught the official French way of shaping the loaves.  Again patience is required- as was a little bit of the pasta rolling technique that I investigated a couple of months ago.  Since I didn't have a linen breadmaking cloth, I improvised with parchment paper. I think that the loaves are a little small, I was trying to stretch the  dough just a bit to make gift loaves.  (Note to self- stop being stingy with the dough!) Yet another raise went by  (1 and 1/2 hours-   bringing the total at this time to 6 hours of rising! OMG.. I am so in the running for the "Patience of the Year" award! LOL)  Reading the directions, I found out that I needed to roll the risen bread over onto it's belly and transfer to the baking pan. Sounded straight forward enough, until I realized that the dough was stuck faster to the parchment than fleas to a dog!  By the time I got them over, they were sad, sad misshapen fallen French breads.  But, I was six hours into this, and into the 450 degree oven they went. I thought I just needed to wait the 25 mins, but no ... Julia told me that the loaves needed to be painted with a water wash, which was repeated at three intervals in the hot oven.   That's like 12 minutes of standing at the oven door watching my clock! After the allotted time and a mild burn later.... here is what came out:

Looks crusty but these babies are only about 1 inch thick- kind of flatbread looking.  However, the hubby liked the taste. I took a few to a friend's house and he hid the other 3 so I wouldn't be giving those away too!  But since I am off tomorrow looks a Part Deux to this little lesson!

Fast forward to 2016: I have done quite of bit of bread making since I posted this blog in 2014. Enough so that a major component of my upcoming cookbook is about breadmaking! I posted this older blog for two reasons. One, that everyone has to start somewhere in their baking adventures. And seriously, those sad, pasty flat little breads up there were part of mine. BUT, with a bit of practice, things can turn around!

Secondly, I want to REDEEM myself for those first loaves, so today was a bread making day and I took Julia back out of the bookshelf and applied my more refined skills on her recipe. 

TAA-DAA!  Just the way they were meant to be.  So the morale of this blog should be: " Just try it, it may fail horribly, and you try it again, and again- and THEN people start asking you for bread making advice! And you set out to write a cookbook on the topic." LOL

Please look to Julia's cooking show from PBS on Youtube, She had a wealth of information that is still relevant today.

Look for a new blog coming up soon on finishing vinegars and oils- my newest obsession!

As always, Live Peacefully. Cook Fearlessly.

Chris