I’ve seen no less than four blogs doling out favoured recipes, so I figured I should join in. I’m not a great cook, but I am fucking brilliant at baking.
Other posts? Don;t mind them, they’re gone. Yes, my minor psychosis of hating what I create has reared it’s ugly head. I’m kind of like the Christian God that way; I like everything for awhile then I go completely genocidal and butcher everything that lives.
Only with less butchery and more delete button.
ANYWAYS.
COMMUNOLIBERFASCIST BREAD
Also known as ‘Homemade French Bread’.
What you need:
6 Cups unbleached flour
3 Cups Warm Water
1 Tablespoon Salt
1.5 Tablespoons Sugar
1/3 Cup olive oil
1.5 Tablespoons lemon juice (The actual stuff, not lemonade)
1.5 Tablespoons (or 2 packages) Active Dry yeast (NOT the instant crap)
Cornmeal
Egg whites
What you do:
First step is to take 1.5 cups of your warm water into a small bowl and pour in the yeast. Do not stir, just gently settle it into the water and set it aside.
Next, take a large mixing bowl and drop in three cups of your flour. Add the salt and sugar and give it a quick swirl with a whisk to even everything out.
When the bowl with the yeast solution has started to froth a bit (Usually ten minutes or so,) gently give it a stir and pour it into the large mixing bowl. Add the oil and lemon juice and stire with a whisk until everything is mixed in.
From there, continue to add half a cup of flour at a time and whisk it in until the mix is too thick and sticky to continue (Usually happens by the second addition of flour for me.) From there, switch out to a wooden spoon and whatever you have handy and continue the process. By about 5 or 5 and a half cups of flour used, even the spoon will be getting nowhere, and at that point it is time to get messy. Please wash your damn hands before continuing.
Dust your hands with flour and dig in, continuing to add a quarter of a cup of flour at a time and kneading, until the dough pulls off from the side of the bowl and no longer sticks to your fingers. When you can form it into a smooth ball, your dough is ready.
Take a new large mixing bowl or clean out the one you just used, then tip in about a tablespoon worth of oil. Drop your dough into the oil and swirl it around. The goal here is to coat both the bowl and most of your dough with the oil. When you’ve got that done, cover the bowl loosely with wax paper or oiled tinfoil or what have you and set someplace warm. If you don’t have a good place for this, I find that filling up the sink with about 3 or 4 inches of hot water and sitting the bowl right in there works quite fine.
Leave the dough to rise for about an hour.
When you come back, the thing should look disquietingly like a fat man’s stomach. For all the carbs this will give you, it’s apt. Trust me though it’s worth it because the bread is freaking delicious.
Punch down the dough and roll it over a few times until it’s a ball once again, then set it aside for a minute. Drag out your bread pans, or if you lack bread pans have no fear, I’ll tell you what to do in a second. For bread pans, grease their interiors (if you need to; some don’t require it,) and cut your dough ball in half. Gently form them into oblongs and sit them into the breadpans. Slice the dough diagonally two or three times across the top with a sharp knife, or if you are like me carve in runes.
For those without bread pans, break out a cookie sheet and lightly oil the surface then spread on a coating of cornmeal. Cut the dough in half as above, form them into oblongs and set on the sheet, carving in the slices or runes as you like.
From here you need to let the dough rise again. Cover once more with wax paper, oiled tinfoil or what have you and set someplace warm. If you lack such a place, your sink will probably work for the breadpans, but for the sheet-baked items, give your oven a turn to 300 degrees for a few seconds, or until the inside is warm but not hot. Set the tray in there.
Another hour or so of rising.
When that’s ready, heat your oven to 400 degrees. If you can preheat it during the last half hour your bread is rising this is great, but if you were stuck using the oven itself as a rising oven, when the loaves have risen set them aside and let the oven heat up for about 10 or fifteen minutes after it has reached the desired temperature – this allows the oven to even out it’s heating elements and provides a stable atmosphere for your bread.
When the oven is ready, gently set your loaves onto the middle rack and set up a timer. Depending on various environmental differences, it can take anywhere from 25 to 35 minutes for your bread to be cooked through and through.
For an optional extra, after about 20 minutes of cooking, take some egg whites and gently brush a coating onto the head of your loaves, then return them to the oven for the last 5 or ten minutes of cooking. This will give them a pleasing glaze and that tasty crust you see on French Bread.
Your bread will be done when they have a nice golden brown colour to the head.
Pull out, let them sit for a few minutes then gently transfer the hot loaves to a cooling rack. If you are anything like me, you must immediately slice off a thick heel of your fresh bread and layer on some real butter, regardless of scalded fingers and chance of a burned tongue. Keep going until you are down to a single loaf of bread; that one you can share with the rest of your family or significant others.
This bread is best when fresh, but it will make great sandwiches and toast for about a week, if it lasts that long.
Fucking FANTASTIC for making french toast, especially if you add 2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon and triple the amount of sugar you put in!
