When I think of French bread I suddenly speak with an extremely embarrassing French accent and imagine myself in a beret.
Oui Oui!
~ugh~
If you have never had homemade French bread, let me weep a little for you (yes, again in the French accent). If you have never made homemade bread of any kind, let me assure you that this is the recipe to start your bread baking adventures. While it might seem daunting, the hardest part is waiting for all the rises to finish.
Berets on, my babies! Let’s bake!
WAIT! I need to preface the recipe with the fact that I have no idea where this recipe came from, but I’ve made it more times than there are fingers on my hands (FYI: all 10 are accounted for).
Ingredients
- 2 packages of regular yeast
- 1/2 cup of very warm water
- 2 tsp salt
- 7 cups of flour
- 2 3/4 cup of water
- Poppy seeds...optional
Instructions
- Mix the yeast, salt and 1/2 cup of very warm, yet not hot water.* Let sit for 5 minutes until foamy**.
- Mix the flour and water together in a large bowl.
- Add yeast mixture.
- Knead by hand 5-7 minutes or in a mixer with dough hook, until elastic.
- Set in large bowl. (there will a a large amount of dough that needs lots of room to expand)
- Let rise 1 hour, then punch down.
- Let rise second hour, then punch down and shape into loaves.
- Let rise one hour.
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Brush the tops of the loaves with an egg white mixture (1 egg or 1 yolk plus 2 tbsp water)
- Dust with poppy seeds.
- Bake 25 minutes or until loaves sound hollow when tapped.***
Notes
* You want the water sufficiently warm, but not so hot that it kills the yeast. This is how I make sure: run the tap on hot and put your wrist under the running water. Right before you need to pull your wrist away, that's about how hot you need it. Unscientific to be sure, but this method has never failed me.
** This is called "proofing" the yeast. If you look in the bowl of yeast after 5 minutes and it doesn't look significantly different from when you started (foamy), you either have bad yeast or you killed it. MURDERER! Start this step over.
Yeast is what expands the bread when baking, so you need a good proof.
*** Tapping the cooked loaves is fun. You should practice this. Do it a few times and you'll come to recognize the "hollow" sound. Kinda like thumping a good watermelon.
As you can see by the recipe (7 cups of flour!), this will make more than a couple of loaves: round loaves, braided loaves, small dinner roll-sized loaves. (I had already eaten two of the smaller loaves by the time this pic was taken. with butter. down the piehole. ~urp~)
Here’s how I break it down:
Loaf #1: eat right out of the oven slathered in butter. Maybe it’s a smaller loaf, maybe not.
Loaf #2: have more with dinner, while pretending I didn’t eat an entire loaf right from the oven earlier in the day. Fight over the last piece.
All other loaves: store in the freezer until needed, so I don’t eat those loaves after dinner, slathered with butter. And jam. Or preserves. I’m not picky.
CAVEAT: this is pure white bread deliciousness. Those on a carbless diet might call you names, might mock your nutritional choices, tell you how horrible that ~gasp~ white bread is for you health, or, more likely, once they see and smell the deliciousness, try to steal your bread. DON’T LET ‘EM!
French bread is a satisfying bread to make. This recipe is easy and elegant. Oh, and delicious. Especially hot from the oven. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
Happy Baking, mes bébés!
Yum! I love french bread! Thanks for the recipe!
You’re welcome, Diana!
I’m salivating. And wondering how late I can make myself stay up tonight to make this. I guess I better wait for the weekend. (sigh)
It is an all-day endeavor, because of the three rises. Let me know how it goes!
Hi! I am stopping by from the GRAND Social and I have never tried to make bread in my life! Can you believe it! Something about yeast and warm water and rising has always intimidated me but I love French Bread so I am definitely going to give it a try! It looks amazing!
Yeast intimidates the best of us. Don’t be intimidated! What’s the worse that can happen? The best that can happen is that you have a giant basket full of homemade French Bread!
Oh it sounds nice I love freshly baked bread as do most people
Freshly baked bread is irresistible!
Beautiful bread! I’m going to try this recipe soon!
Thanks, Talya…it was/is so good!
I’ve been looking for a good bread recipe! I need to break out the KitchenAid and get to work on this!
I didn’t have any luck kneading this in my KitchenAid, but I have the 5qt and seven cups of flour is a lot!
Okay, seriously! That is impressive. Homemade French bread? Très bien!
Oui! Homemade! You can do it too…seriously. Plus, there’s the whole therapeutic part to kneading dough.
I love Bread and this bread looks amazing! Just give me some honey butter. Thanks so much for linking up to Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop. I am featuring this bread post on my social medias tonight.
Blessings,
Diane Roark
Ooooo, honey butter. yum. Thanks for sharing, Diane!
I love french bread!
I will try to make it!
Thank you for the recipe!
I am coming from Crafts a la mode Party! 🙂
French Bread, straight from the oven…oy…so good! Have fun baking.
Sounds delicious!
Thanks! Nothing like homemade bread fresh from the oven.
This looks delicious, there is not much better than baked bread! Thanks for linking up to DIY Inspired 🙂
Thanks…and agreed!
My mouth is watering… your French bread looks so delicious! This post took me back to a quaint little hotel we stayed at in Provence! If only I was a baker…
Emily! What a lovely remembrance…and now I want some!