French Bread

A work in progress

Ingredients

• 1 + 1/3c flour
  
• 1/2tsp salt
  
• 1/2tsp yeast
  
• 1/3tsp white vinegar
  
• warm water
  

Mix flour, salt, and yeast in a bowl. (I am assuming here that we're reasonably confident with the yeast in question.) Add vinegar to about 1/3c warm water (about as warm as the tap will go) and slowly add to four mixture, stopping every so often to mix. Get more warm water (a cup?) and slowly add, stopping to mix with the dough, until you get a very SLIGHTLY sticky dough consistency. If you overshoot (and I always do) add more flour until you can handle the dough. Turn the dough out onto a floured counter and knead for two minutes. Spray some PAM in the bowl, put the dough back in, and then PAM the top of the dough. Cover and let rise until doubled. I have no idea how long this should take.

Preheat oven to 450. When the dough has doubled, turn it out onto a floured surface and dust the top with some more flour. Press it with your hands into a rough rectangle, and then fold it into thirds to make a sort of log shape. Now draw the ends out to make a baguette shape. Pinch closed the seam where you folded the dough. Place the dough seam side down on a baking sheet, make some slits in the top, and cover to let rise for another half hour. I recommend on top of the warm oven.

Uncover the bread and brush the top with olive oil. Place a baking pan on the bottom rack of the oven with a half inch of water in it, and place the bread on the top rack. Bake 25 minutes, remove the water and let bake for another 5 minutes. Remove and let cool on a rack or something like that.

Thoughts: I've done this a couple times now, and the most important thing for me has been to work in small batches because my oven is so small. The crust has been pretty good so far. For my most recent experiment I used only a pinch of yeast and about half a cup of stale champagne for leavening. It took a long time to rise, but the crust was really great. Not sure what I'll do to modify this in future recipes. So far so good. As with other bread recipes, I used the "microwave trick" to rise the dough the first time.

Disaster Index: 1/10