It is once again the time to share with the world the Daring Baker's challenge of the month. This month Breadchick Mary at The Sour Dough and Sara of I Like to Cook chose Julia Childs recipe for French bread. How exciting for me! I love making bread.
I made the bread, following the directions to a T, this past Saturday and was not pleased with the results. It was not the shape of the final loaves that I had a problem with, I was disappointed that my loaves looked like poor little sickly albino's. Being the crazy anal perfectionist that I am I decided that I would devote yet another whole day to this challenge and try the recipe again. So Sunday morning I woke up bright and early, watched the PBS video of this bread being made and decided to attack the recipe differently.
The second time around I made a few slight modifications:
- I placed the formed dough on my stones and did not bother with flipping the dough from the canvas.
- I also decided to mist my dough with oil instead of water. The water just did not give me the effect I was going for and I thought it was strange to open the oven door so many times. Right before I placed the bread in the oven I misted it with oil and then misted it again 5 minutes into the baking process.
- The last and final change that I made was to throw some water into the bottom of the oven to create steam. I did this right before I put the dough in the oven and also when I was misting the dough with oil for the second time.
This bread was a tad salty tasting, which is understandable since it has as much salt as it does yeast, but it still had an amazing flavor and texture.The recipe is pretty long, 13 pages when printed out, so please refer to Mary's blog for the full version of the recipe. Also please check out the Daring Bakers blogroll to see all of the other wonderful Daring Bakers's loaves of bread.
How dare me, I almost forgot to share the comparison pictures of my sickly little albino loaves to my golden brown beauties.
Seeeeee, I told you they were albino. :)
40 comments:
As I told you before (but I can't tell you enough)...these look SOOOOO good! I LOVE how "holey" they turned out too!
You did a great job with this challenge, and you get extra points for doing it twice! Congrats on another successful challenge!
Both the albinos and the deep dark beauties look excellent. I love the star formation on your boule!
you shaped them beautifully! I love them.
Wish we could taste all of the bread instead of just looking..LOL!
Beautiful bread! I can't believe you made the recipe twice, your dedicated!
I LOVE your bread- even the albino loaves look fantastic! GREAT JOB!! :O)
I had the albino bread problem too. Even my final loaves are little pasty looking. Yours look great, and thanks for sharing your method for getting them to turn out a little bit darker.
I think your bread looks beautiful. And great job figuring out how to adjust the recipe to your liking.
Gorgeous bread Amber! It looks great. It was a fun challenge!
Wonderful job! I LOL'd at the albino comment... :) The design on top is fabulous!
Both look great. We had the same issues and determination. With the second attempt I figure you can experiment because you followed it step by step. I love the oil mist technique.great job.
I actually think both rounds are gorgeous. The beautiful golden ones are a baker's dream, and the albino one remind me of classic boules dusted with flour!
Your albino bread looked like my bread! Maybe if I get the courage to make it again I'll try your modifications. Great job!
-Clara
http://iheartfood4thought.wordpress.com
The shaping is awesome!! I Love the way you cut the one. Beautful looking bread you have there!
As I said on the DB site...wow! I love the concentric circles. Great job!
I love the design on your loaves! Well done. The oil trick is interesting. I'll have to try that. Cheers!
Nice job! I'll have to get fancy with cutting my bread next time.
Your second attempt proved worth it - those are some beautifully colored loaves! Congrats.
Great Job, the bread looks fantastic. Hats off to you for having the courage to make it twice! I'd have just sat down quietly and blamed the flour, blamed the humidity or just blamed whatever I could think off!! Well Done!!
WOW! Another with total dedication. Way to go, they look fab!
Pale but still lovely! Others are right, you get bonus points for doing it TWICE. Great job!
Yup...Albino loaves. But I'm glad you came back for a 2nd try! And the slashes are lovely.
thanks for baking with Sara and I
i'm so impressed! but of course i expected no less from the bread queen herself ;) thanks for the tips, wish i had seen before i made mine...
I like the snail-shape, I don't know the right expression.
You did a great job, bravo
Ulrike from Küchenlatein
oh waht prett y loave you made. well done
You did a lovely job on your challenge. I love the cuts on the round loaf that make it look like a flower. So pretty. It's interesting the first batch of bread I made the loaves were pretty pale too, but the second batch browned nicely. The only thing I did differently was to use a different bag of flour, because the first had run out...puzzling.
Natalie @ Gluten A Go Go
Your bread looks fantastic!! I love the design of them and the crust is beautiful! Great job :)
wow! the difference is so great! the second batch looks lovely indeed, such nice colour!
Great bread! Good work!
Very, very nice! I agree with some of the others, making it twice was very dedicated. I called it quits after making my little stones. :) I wouldn't mind trying it again some other time.
Good for you for doing this -- twice. But I must say your anaemic buns do have their charms...
j
Your loaves are gorgeous! I'm jealous! I love the slashing patterns - beautiful bread!
Very pretty!
Your bread looks wonderful. I love the different designs you used on the crust.
Yes, compared to your golden loaves, they are a little albino. But your bread turned out great.
Oh, yeah, I would probably pick the golden ones over the albino ones. Great job on this!
Even the albinos look good to me! Great job, especially perfecting it the second time around.
Wow...the difference is quite impressive. I love the design on top of the round loaf. Looks great!
Wow..you did it twice and the 2nd time around was a big thumbs up. Ha ha..albino bread...u made me laugh. Do visit my blog when you are free.
Your bread looks delicious. I like the option of showing the inside.
Andreia
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