French Bread

French Bread is a lot more complicated than I thought, but once you know a few little tricks, you will be well on your way to trophy wife status. Let's get real, how many women do you know that can make their own dang loaf of French Bread to serve with that perfect pasta combination? Well, if your pasta is already in the oven you need to get crackin, cause it takes a while to make this type of masterpiece.

It doesn't really matter what recipe you use, but here is the one I use...

French Bread	%	(original)	(scaled)
Water	61%	17	5.78
Yeast	2.75%	0.75	0.13
Bread flour	100%	28	9.47
Salt	2%	0.5	0.19
Malt Syrup	0.5%	0.13	0.05
Sugar	1.75%	0.5	0.17
Shortening	1.75%	0.5	0.17
Total Weight	169.8%	47.38	15.95

For my bakery class, we had to learn to scale recipes, so here is the original as well as the scaled recipe, it is all in ounces, good luck converting it. I hate converting so much I would spend the money to get a bakery scale before I actually sat down and converted all those stupid numbers. Anyways.

Oh yeah, use honey instead of malt syrup. Cause nobody even has malt syrup.

Make a well on the counter with the flour and sugar that has been mixed together previously. Place the salt and shortening on the outside of the well and the honey and yeast inside the well. Pour the water into the well and let sit for about a minute. 

Start circling your fingertips around the well, be careful of that water. For real. If you make a hole in your well and the water breaks out, you might as well make a hole in Lahontan Dam cause you can't fix that crap no matter how hard you try. 

By now you should have formed a soft dough. Knead it and stretch the gluten fibers. If you don't know what that means, google it cause it would take me too long to explain.

Let the dough proof for 40 minutes and then punch it down (release the sides from the bowl).

Form into a French Bread loaf and dust with flour. Let rise for 40 more minutes.

Make 3 slits almost parallel to the dough and brush with water.

Place in a 450 degree oven and steam 3 times in the first 10 minutes. 

If you don't have a steamer oven, simply squirt water on the walls of the oven 3 times in the first 10 minutes. 

Annnnnnnndddd. You gots yourself some French Bread!

Good job, you've graduated to master trophy wife.