After having my rolls turn out so well, I decided to keep on trucking on and try my luck with french bread. Garlic/Cheese bread is a favorite in my house, so I thought it would be awesome if I could learn to make the bread! I found a recipe after looking through pintrest. I chose this recipe because I liked that it made two loaves. I found some of the ingredients to be weird…I have read a lot of recipes since I started this project and no bread recipes have ever had vinegar in them, but I just decided to go with it! I had no problem following the recipe and making the dough. I am getting some serious muscles from kneading all this bread – even though I have a stand mixer at my parents house, hopefully my mom will bring it for me this week! After letting the dough rise (it pretty much tripled in size) I punched it down and divided it into two portions. I had no clue how to shape french bread, so I used this website to give some instructions. I also decided to supplement with a youtube video. I also learned a helpful tip from this video, that you know your dough it ready to work with if you stick your finger in it and it doesn’t spring back up – I tested it out on this recipe and it worked excellent. Both yielded different techniques and so I used one on each loaf since my recipe produced two. I found no real difference in either method, nor did I prefer one more than the other. After allowing my bread to rise for another hour, I basted an egg over top of it and put some slices into the top. I found that it was incredibly hard to slice the bread and realized I was supposed to do it after shaping, before allowing the second rise. Isn’t hindsight great! I baked the loaves for 20 minutes then I rotated the pan and allowed another three minutes for the one that was at the front of the oven to brown.
I was very happy with the way these turned out. They are huge – I wasn’t expecting this big, so I cut them in half before freezing. Will definitely make this recipe again.
Thanks for reading! Its been a slice!
Taylor Herback 