Daring Bakers French Bread

I have only made bread a few times before. Not because I don’t love it, but because it never lived up to my expectations. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. So when my first Daring Bakers recipe was french bread and the instructions went on for pages and pages and took 7-9 hours, I was a little intimidated.

My first attempt at the recipe produced a pretty loaf of bread. The crust was nicely browned and crisp and chewy. But in my rush to get the bread in the oven so we could eat it by dinner time, I forget about the steam oven. So I was disappointed with the crumb. It just didn’t have enough air bubbles. The bread tasted delicious though. We had it with stew the first night and some amazing cheese sandwiches the next day for lunch.

My second attempt at making the bread (of course I had to try it a second time to see if I could get it perfect) produced a much better crumb. I felt the dough was too dry the first time and so this time, I spooned the flour into the measuring cup instead of scooping. The dough was perfect the second time. I had two beautiful batards rising on my pastry cloth.

However when I went to transfer the first batard to the pizza stone, the top of the dough was damp and it stuck to my hand, and my beautiful batard deflated like a balloon. So sad! I was much more careful with the second loaf, so I ended up with one beautiful batard and one sad looking batard. But we ate the sad looking one with jam the minute it came out of the oven and it was delicious.

I really enjoyed making this bread. It didn’t even seem all that difficult the second time around. I plan to make this bread again. I still dream about those cheese sandwiches. Thanks to Breadchick Mary (The Sour Dough) & Sara (I Like to Cook) for the delicious french bread recipe. I’m looking forward to the next Daring Bakers challenge!