Yesterday I made what will be at least for now the last loaf of challah and moved on to a new style of bread. Up until now, the breads I have been making are sweet breads. The bread I made before the challah was quite sweet, and challah's taste is in part defined by being very sweet. Then around three or four hours before I went to bed, I started a loaf of simple french bread.
The process is quite simple. Mix a teaspoon and a half of yeast with seven cups of flour, two teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of brown sugar and a cup and a half of water. Stir it until it forms a nice ball, then kneed it for fifteen minutes. Then rise, kneed, shape, put in plastic bags on top of cooking sheets and let sit in the fridge overnight. Then when you get up, pull them out of the fridge and let them warm up for an hour or two. Heat the oven to 475 and prepare for baking. Score the top of the loafs just before you put them in, and cook!
The interesting thing about this process, opposed to say the other loafs of bread I've made, is the retarding. Retarding is a way to enhance the flavor of bread. In this case, by putting it into the fridge. This forces the yeast to slow down the production of CO2, meaning that in the 8 hours I left it in the fridge it rose as much as it did in the first 30 minute long rise!
I also did a different shape for my loaf this time, a longer shape more suited to sandwiches. As this picture demonstrates, it went quite well I'd say!
(picture coming)
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