First attempt at French loaf
1mon 26d ago by piefed.ca/u/iamthetot in bready from media.piefed.ca
Here's the recipe I (mostly) followed
I used about half whole wheat flour. I also kneaded by hand. I kinda just like the process of doing it by hand more, feels more personal? I'll probably get tired of it eventually lol.
Didn't get 100% the rise I hoped for which I think has to do with the whole wheat probably. I was intimidated by the shaping process but actually thought I did pretty well for first try! I'm keen to try a few more complicated shaped breads, like maybe pretzels soon.
More pics:
Ate some with PB and Jelly for breakfast, and had the rest of one loaf with potato soup.
Hell yeah, low oil recipes always make for a soft and fluffy crumb. It's not my preferred bread for sandwiches in general, but its easily my goto for peanut butter or otherwise for dipping in soup.
Whole wheat is definitely going to affect rise. For most bread that I make, I use ~80% bread flour and then the remaining percent I'll do whole wheat or rye or semolina. You still get plenty of flavor that way.
Also, I'm not sure what kind of oven you are using, but this kind of bread in particular would normally be baked in a deck oven with steam. There's a lot of thermal mass so the oven temp doesnt drop much when you put bread in, and it sits directly on hot steel. To replicate it at home, you can use a baking steel (or stone) on a rack, with a tray at the bottom that you pour boiling water into to make steam for the first bit of the bake.
The recipe uses ice cubes in the oven, which is the technique I tried this time. I will try the boiling water method next time. I also have a pizza stone that I could try baking on, this batch was just on a metal pan with parchment paper.
Those look great! And having it with potato soup sounds delicious.