How to Make Crusty French Bread

Traditional French bread has a chewy crust and is made with white wheat flour. Sourdough starters are ordinarily used when it is made, giving the bread a light, bubbly texture. The slit cuts in the bread let the gases inside develop and French bread is ordinarily made in long sticks, although you can get round, oval or quadrate loaves too, as well as smaller buns and rolls.

Authentic French bread is made with flour, yeast, salt, and water and shaped into a torpedo or baguette. French bread does not keep for a long time so it is best to pack it in plastic and warm it up before eating it. By law, authentic French bread is not allowed to contain preservatives.

Wheat Bread

There are other recipes for French bread and you can use all separate kinds of fillings or use the bread to make croutons for your popular French onion soup recipe.

The History of French Bread

The word "baguette" was not used until 1920, although this style of bread is believed to predate that. Long loaves have been made since the era of Louis Xiv and long, thin ones since the middle of the 1700s.

Some population think the baguette descends from "pain viennois" which is a long loaf from Austria but this is possibly not the case. The history of baguettes is poorly documented so nobody knows for sure how these loaves came into being.

Easy French Bread Recipe

This is a bread motor recipe and the resulting bread will be light, fluffy, and very tasty. The egg white helps to give the bread a firm, chewy crust and this bread is marvelous enjoyed hot from the oven.

What you will need:

2 cups bread flour 2 teaspoons white sugar 2 teaspoons salt 1 egg white, whisked with 1 tablespoon cold water 2 cups all purpose flour 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 2 tablespoons dried milk powder 1 1/2 cups water 2 teaspoons active dry yeast

How to make it:

Add the milk, flour, water, salt, yeast, and sugar to the bread motor and opt the right dough settings. Punch down the bread and leave it to rise for an hour. Knead it and shape the dough into loaves by cutting it into two parts and rolling each one into a twelve inch wide rectangle. You might need to add some more flour.

From the long end, roll up the seams, pinching them together. Repeat this with the other loaf. Lightly grease a cookie sheet and sprinkle some cornmeal on it. Put the French bread loaves on the cookie sheet and cover them with a dish towel. Let them rise for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Put a pie plate on the lowest oven rack and add an inch of hot water to it. Bake the bread for fifteen minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Bake the bread for someone else twenty minutes. Brush the egg white over the bread and give it someone else five minutes in the oven.

How to Make Crusty French Bread

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