Let’s Bake French Bread
French bread is the foundation for all other breads.
Take the time to learn this and your bread making will improve.
Let’s talk about French bread. You may be thinking of those very long breads that you see in the bakery with 5 slashes in the top that open up to make the crust look very interesting. Those are baguettes. Baguette is a shape and French bread is a type of dough. It’s a medium hydration dough that is shaped into a myriad of interesting shapes. Baguette is just one of them. Recently while visiting New Orleans, I saw a shape I had not seen in a long time. The epis. It’s shaped just like a baguette but instead of slashing with a lame, it’s cut to look like a wheat stalk with scissors. It’s one of the classic shapes. We saw it at Bellegarde bread (bellegardenola.com). Graison Gill welcomed us and showed us his beautiful French bread.
Traditionally it’s just flour, water, yeast and salt. But there are many variations on it. I like making a simple baguette or epis from about 250g of French dough. These will fit pretty well in a standard home oven. In a professional bakery, they will be about 350g and 20-22 inches long. The shaping can vary from baker to baker. But what other shapes might you make from the French dough?
Ficelle: a very long and thin stick of dough closer to a bread stick
Fougasse: a flatbread that is stretched out and cut with a bench scraper to
make holes in it
Boule: a round loaf
Batard: a football shaped loaf
Hard Dinner Rolls: can be round, knotted or torpedo shaped
What are the ingredients in French dough?
Bread flour or AP flour 100% 500g
Water 65% 325g
Salt 2% 10g
Instant yeast 1% 5g
I like using bread flour but during the pandemic, all I could get was AP and the French dough came out great. It was just a bit different. Not better or worse.
Can you use a pre-ferment? Yes, it’s a great dough to make with a poolish. You might take 25% of the flour and mix it with an equal amount of water with just a pinch of yeast. You can let this sit overnight or just a few hours.
Mixing the dough
I like to mix this dough by hand if I’m making a small batch. I have also made larger batches by hand but you may want to use a mixer. I mix the water (and poolish if you are using it with the yeast and flour. I mix it to a firm but still undeveloped dough. It should only take a minute or two. I cover it with a towel and walk away for 20 minutes to an hour. This is my autolyse. This helps hydrate the dough and actually develops gluten as it sits. When I come back to give it a stretch, the dough is now much more elastic. It’s still not fully developed but way more than it was just an hour before. I stretch it out on the bench and sprinkle the salt over 66% of it. I fold the dough without the salt on it over the middle and then fold the top piece down like a letter fold. I fold it in thirds again. And I give it some more rest, usually 20 minutes. I do this 3 more times over the next couple of hours. The dough should be fully developed at this point. If it’s not and it’s still tearing, not elastic and extensible, give it some more rest and give it another fold. It’s at this point you have to decide whether you will ferment at room temperature for another hour or leave it in the refrigerator overnight.
Fermentation
During the fermentation the yeast is doing its job. It has one job: to produce co2 gas. The co2 gas is what we are looking for. This is what makes the bread rise. We have developed gluten and that will serve to help trap the co2 gas inside the bread dough. By letting the dough rise on the bench for an hour, you will get a very good bread but the flavor will be relatively plain. It’s great bread. But if you let it ferment in the refrigerator overnight, you will be inviting the very beneficial lactobacilli bacteria into the mix. These bacteria bring with them some interesting properties, namely flavor and relaxation. Acid builds up in the dough overnight, acetic and lactic acid specifically. Acetic acid has a slightly sour flavor to it, think vinegar and lactic acid makes the bread easier to shape. I think you can tell which way I prefer. Whichever you choose to do, let it double in volume.
Scaling
You’ll need to decide what shapes and sizes you want to make. It’s up to you. I like making smaller loaves because I am a crust junkie. You can do a demi-baguette at about 200g. You can do a boule at 500g. You could make a small fougasse at 300-400g. Just play with sizes. But decide what sizes you want and cut the dough into those sizes. Round them. Even if you are not making round rolls, you’ll still want to preshape your pieces. This insures organized dough ready for shaping later. Once you have them rounded, let the pieces rest for a few minutes. This is called benching. It allows for some relaxation after scaling and rounding.
Makeup
Makeup is where you will make the final shape of your breads. If you are making a baguette, you’ll press the dough out to a flat rectangle about 6 inches square. Fold 1/3 of the dough down like you are folding a business letter. Fold the bottom third up to the top and form a seam. Run your thumb along this seam and really seal the bread up tightly. Use the heel of your hand to seal it. You can get a lot of power from the heel of your hand but still be gentle on the dough. Stretch the dough out using open fingers and form a cylinder. You can either taper the ends or leave them plain. I’m a taper fan myself. Stretch the cylinder to about 12-14 inches long. Place this on a parchment lined pan or couche. If you are just starting out, just use the pan. As you get more experienced, you might want to invest in a baking stone. If you don’t have a baking stone, don’t worry about it, just use a sturdy metal pan. Cover the bread with a towel and let it do its thing.
Proofing
Doing its thing involves the yeast giving one final push before going in the oven to bake. The pieces of dough will double in volume during proofing. For some folks this will take about an hour. Other folks make take 3-4 hours. It depends on your environment, humidity, the way you mixed the dough, your gluten development, the type of flour you used, the salt in your dough and several hundred other variables. I can’t say how long it will take to rise. But if you put it in the oven before it’s proofed you will be disappointed. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen bakers make beautiful dough only to ruin it by underproofing and underbaking. Take your time on this step. It’s the most important step of all.
Baking
Pre-heat your oven to 450°F (225°C). Once your breads are doubled in volume, you are ready to bake. But just before the bread goes in the oven, be sure to slash the bread with long overlapping slashes down the middle of the bread. Don’t slash from side to side. We want to open up the bread. Slashes 5-7 inches long down the center of the loaf are best. This will promote a cylindrical shape to your baked bread. Put the bread in the oven and bake for about 25-30 minutes. I like using steam in the oven to delay crust formation. I use a laundry sprayer and spray about 3-4 times during the first 10 minutes of baking. After the 10 minutes there is no point to spraying as the crust begins to form. Many of my baking friends like to put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to produce steam. I prefer the sprayer but this method works well too. You are looking for a deep rich golden brown crust on the bread. Resist the temptation to take the bread out because you think it is burning. It’s not. There’s not much to burn in French bread. There’s no sugar or fat. So let it go a bit longer than you think you normally would. You will be rewarded with a very crunch flavorful crust.
Cooling
So now you have taken the bread out of the oven and it’s cooling on a rack. You so desperately want to take a taste. Don’t just yet. During the time the breads are cooling you may hear some crackling. This is the bread cooling. It was just in a 450°F environment and now it’s in a 70°F environment. It’s a shock. But another thing that is happening is that the last moisture in the bread is finishing baking your bread while it’s on your counter. If you open the bread too soon, the bread will not have a chance to finish baking. Give it about 15-20 minutes to cool before opening the bread. When you do taste it, try it plain at first to assess the flavor and texture. Then you can go ahead and spread with butter, cheese or whatever spread you want to put on it. I have to say it’s great just by itself.
Storing
There may be leftover bread. It could happen. But the problem is that French dough doesn’t have much of a shelf life. You can keep it in a plastic bag overnight, but then it will be pretty tough the next day. I have found that freezing the bread is the best way to go. This preserves the texture and flavor of the bread. It will keep for a couple of weeks in the freezer. I like to defrost for a bit when I use it and then I pop it in the toaster oven to put a new crust on it.
Well, that’s a quick introduction to French bread. I’ll have more in the coming weeks. Thanks for taking the time to read.
Chef Tom
