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You know the crust on really good restaurant bread that is so crunchy and crackly that it flakes into a ton of pieces when its cut, and is perfect to scoop up soup or sauce? That is this bread’s crust. This bread is so tasty and so fantastic – I wish you all could’ve tried it at 2 hours and 1 millisecond after it came out of my oven. (It had to cool for that long!) This is my very first Daring Baker’s Challenge, and one that I was super excited to try. My beginnings in the baking world were bread making – I’ve even got a pricey bread class scheduled across the country in California next week. But there was something about this recipe that was so intimidating. I’m pretty sure its the fact that they recipe/instructions were like 8 pages long. Who would’ve thought that a recipe with only 4 ingredients would be so complicated? This month’s challenge was recreating Julia Child’s French Bread recipe. This month’s hosts were Mary and Sara.

This bread was really easy to make – as long as you have the right proportion of flour to water. That wasn’t the case with the first attempt. The dough was just too wet and didn’t give the right rise, and definitely made things interesting when it came to shaping and scoring. I had added a little bit of flour, but that wasn’t enough. I guess I was thinking that this batter was supposed to be pretty “wet” the first time around. The second attempt was a definite success. The recipe gives a little ‘wiggle room’ when saying how much water to use, and I was definitely more conservative the second time. The dough was just as it should be, springing back as I poked at it after adequate mixing. I preheated the oven for about 15 minutes with the door open to create a warm environment, and the bread rose very quickly – about 3-3.5 hours. After turning the dough out, and degassing it, I placed it back in the container where it rose to just about triple again in less than 1.5 hours! I decided to do two medium boules – mainly because I needed more experience with their shaping. Slashing was much easier with a firmer dough The boules plumped up beautifully in the oven. They baked for about 23 minutes and it was agony waiting for the two hours to pass to finally cut into these beauties. But somehow I managed by watching the food network and writing the post for my Tuesday’s With Dorie challenge.

The crumb is fantastic – chewy and light. I had a toasted slice this morning for breakfast, with cheddar cheese on top. I was in heaven! I can imagine, however, that eating too much of this bread could wreak havoc on the roof of your mouth. But every now and then, that’s not a bad thing! This is the perfect bread for a soup bowl! Today the low temp is ~21 degrees F, so maybe that will be my dinner? I’ll just have to re-heat it at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes so that the dough softens up some and the crust crisps!

I’m so glad that Mary and Sara suggested this french bread as our challenge. I really enjoyed the experience, and definitely learned a whole lot. I can’t wait to see what the other DB’ers have created!

Update – I had frozen the boule (and a half) that I had left over, and one night when hubbs was sick, I defrosted one in the oven and warmed it up, and turned it into a bread bowl for some hearty clam chowder. I used the other half as dippin’ material, and he even commented on how tasty it was and how crisp the crust was. I just wish I had the forethought to take a picture!! Yay for bread!