Ingredients:
Bread
- 1 1/4 cup warm water
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 1/2 cups bread flour
Glaze:
- 2 Tablespoons water
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
DIRECTIONS
- To make the dough, start by dissolving the sugar, salt and yeast in the warm water. Pour this into your mixer’s mixing bowl.
- Using your bakery mixer with the dough hook attached, slowly add the flour one cup at a time. Stop adding when the dough is rather firm. (add or subtract from the flour depending on humidity and how the dough looks)
- Remove the dough from the mixer and form into a ball, then place in a clean bowl, cover with a damp cloth and let this rise for about 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes, when your dough has risen, punch this down then cover again with the damp cloth and allow this dough to rise until it has doubled in size (approximately an hour).
- Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a floured flat surface. Knead a few times then roll this out into a rectangular shape. Use your baking sheet as your template when rolling out so you can see how long your bread will be. Your rolled out dough should be half as wide as the sheet and shorter in length by an inch on each side.
- Roll out the flattened dough into a baguette shape (like what you would do when you roll up a jelly roll), then place on a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Let this rise again until it has doubled in size. While the dough is rising, preheat your home or bakery oven to 400 degrees F.
- Once risen, make 3 diagonal shallow cuts into the top of the loaf. Mix your salt water glaze and with a pastry brush, wipe the top of the loaf with this mixture (just enough to make it look shiny). This is to create a crispy bread crust for your French loaf.
- Put your loaf in the oven and bake for 20 up to 25 minutes. Remove from oven when done and cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!
- This recipe only makes one loaf, so if you want to make more than one, simply multiply the amount of ingredients by the number of loaves you want to make.
