Bread-making is one of those things that strikes fear into the hearts of fledgling bakers. Baking cakes and cookies isn't as daunting as baking bread, hence the popularity of bread machines. Being the stubborn type, I've been determined to learn how to make bread the old-fashioned way. My attempts at whole wheat bread with honey turned out well, but the dinner rolls didn't rise as much as they should have. They still tasted good though.
This weekend, I found a recipe for French loaf in my KitchenAid mixer cookbook, and decided to try it. By God, it worked! The recipe made two long crusty loaves of bread. The picture above is the remaining half of one of the loaves; M and I had devoured the other half with cheese and olives. The crust was perfectly golden and flaky, and the bread is warm, dense and doughy. It toasts very nicely too. Unlike many commercial baguettes, the crust isn't so dense that you have to knaw at it like a rabid dog.
The recipe was very simple: yeast, warm water, melted butter, salt and flour, and then water and egg white brushed on the bread 3/4 of the way through baking. The longest part of the process was letting the dough rise twice.
