French Bread Recipe

How to make it

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• Heat the water to 45℃, dissolve active dry yeast in a small cup with 100mL of the heated water. Wait ten minutes.
• Mix everything together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. The mixture should form into a ball but still be sticking to the sides a little bit. The dough should stick to your hands unless you put flour on your hands.
• Put a small amount of flour on the counter and dump the dough out onto the counter. Sprinkle some flour over the dough and on your hands and roll the down around to get it good and covered with flour.
• Let the dough rest for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, wash the bowl and the mixing spoon because you're done with them.
• Knead the dough for about 10 minutes or until you notice a change in the dough that makes it easier to work with. You will need to reapply flour to your hands and the counter in order to keep the dough from sticking. The dough should be very wet. You knead by slamming the dough on the counter, holding it still with one hand and stretching it out with the other hand, then fold the stretched part back on itself and slam the dough on the table again. Every two folds, rotate the dough a quarter-turn.
• Fill the bottom part of a double-boiler with water heated to 27℃, coat the top part with a thin layer of olive oil and put the dough in there and cover it with a damp towel. Leave it until it's doubled in size. This could take anywhere from 20 minutes to 90 minutes. If the dough doesn't rise after 90 minutes, something has gone wrong.
• Using your fist, press down slowly on the dough. You should hear air escaping from the dough. Sprinkle flour on the counter again and dump the dough out onto the counter. Stretch the dough out and fold it into thirds, then rotate the bread and repeat, form the dough back into a ball, and put it back in the double-boiler until it doubles in size again. Also, preheat the oven to 250℃.
• Punch it down with your fist again, dump it out, fold it into thirds, then roll it out so it gets pretty long and fold the ends down and pinch them closed.
• Use a sharp knife to make 3 long thin cuts on the top of the dough, long ways. Put your loaf on a baking pan and stick in in the oven. After 5 minutes, lower the temperature in the oven to 200℃ and bake for another 30 minutes.