{"id":68,"date":"2008-02-29T11:22:59","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T17:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/29\/julia-childs-french-bread\/"},"modified":"2008-02-29T11:22:59","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T17:22:59","slug":"julia-childs-french-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/29\/julia-childs-french-bread\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Child’s French Bread"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my first month being a part of the Daring Bakers<\/a>, a super-cool group of bloggers who take on new and exciting baking challenges each month.\u00c2\u00a0 In past months, they’ve tackled Lemon Meringue Pie and Yule Logs.\u00c2\u00a0 February’s challenge was Julia Child’s French Bread, hosted by Breadchick Mary of The Sour Dough<\/a> and Sara of I Like to Cook<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Many people are wary of baking bread.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve successfully baked yeast bread before, so I wasn’t too concerned….until I saw the length of the recipe.\u00c2\u00a0 It is 15-17 pages long, and can be found here<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 A very daunting first challenge indeed!<\/p>\n

I noticed that the hostesses for the month indicated that the best type of flour to use for this recipe was french style flour, which is a lower gluten all purpose flour.\u00c2\u00a0 King Arthur Flour was mentioned, so at the beginning of the month, I headed on over to the King Arthur Flour website<\/a> (which I love) to order some flour…..and noticed it was sold out.\u00c2\u00a0 Out of stock until February 14.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, the best indication that the Daring Bakers are baking up bread this month is when a certain type of flour is sold out.\u00c2\u00a0 Craziness!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s when I knew that being a Daring Baker is serious business.\u00c2\u00a0 I went ahead and order some, knowing that it might not be here in time to complete the challenge by month’s end.\u00c2\u00a0 In the meantime, I found some flour at the grocery store that seemed<\/em> to be similar in gluten content.<\/p>\n

The next big challenge for me was timing.\u00c2\u00a0 The recipe indicates that it takes 9 hours from start to finish since the bread requires three separate rises.\u00c2\u00a0 With a needy six month old son who is currently going through a “don’t set me down ever ever ever or I’ll screech like you are pouring boiling hot acid all over me”, I figured I’d probably have to wait until the weekend when my husband was around.\u00c2\u00a0 Then my husband told me at the last minute he was going out of town for work one weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 Grr!!\u00c2\u00a0 But somehow, I found the time, sacrificing some sleep in the name of good bread.<\/p>\n

My first attempt at the bread was a complete failure.\u00c2\u00a0 The dough never made it pas the first rise.\u00c2\u00a0 After reading through the recipe again, multiple times, I realized that I may have killed the yeast by using water that was too hot.\u00c2\u00a0 Stupid mistake, easily preventable.<\/p>\n

The second attempt fared a little better.\u00c2\u00a0 A new day, a fresh start.\u00c2\u00a0 I very carefully tested the temperature of the water with a thermometer.\u00c2\u00a0 The dough made it past the first rise.\u00c2\u00a0 Hizzah!\u00c2\u00a0 But the second rise was a little lackluster, and took way too long.\u00c2\u00a0 At that point, I figured I’d already invested quite a bit of time, so I might as well soldier on.\u00c2\u00a0 After forming my batons<\/em>, the shape I chose for the bread, the third rise never really happened.\u00c2\u00a0 Hoping that maybe the bread would rise in the oven, I went ahead and baked it anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 The result, this time at 1 am, was some very hard loaves that were anemic looking.\u00c2\u00a0 Bread 2, Cara 0.<\/p>\n

For those of you that don’t know me, I can be very stubborn.\u00c2\u00a0 (And for those of you who do<\/em> know me, I know you’re snickering right now….understatement of the year, right<\/em>?)\u00c2\u00a0 And I have trouble admitting defeat.\u00c2\u00a0 This can be both a good and bad thing.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, I took Advanced Placement Calculus my senior year of high school, and struggled the whole year, refusing to transfer to the regular<\/em> Calculus class because that would be admitting that I wasn’t able to handle the AP class.\u00c2\u00a0 It was very silly and stupid of me.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s how I was feeling about this recipe.\u00c2\u00a0 Frustrated, but not wanting to let the bread win.\u00c2\u00a0 I vowed to give it one last shot….<\/p>\n

For my THIRD attempt, I bought new yeast, just in case there was an issue with the stuff I’d been using (doubtful because I’d used it recently with success, but I was covering all my bases here).\u00c2\u00a0 I bought new flour, because the flour I’d ordered STILL(!!) wasn’t here.\u00c2\u00a0 This time, the dough came together, rose, and generally behaved itself.\u00c2\u00a0 Success at last!\u00c2\u00a0 My husband and I impatiently waited for the bread to cool before digging in.\u00c2\u00a0 We both thought it was really good bread.\u00c2\u00a0 Really good<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 Some Daring Bakers named it the best bread they had ever tasted.\u00c2\u00a0 In all the breads I’ve tasted, this one was definitely up there…\u00c2\u00a0 And it was still good two days later, reheated.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll probably make this again in the future now that I’ve got this recipe all figured out, but it definitely takes some patience.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I’m ready for my next challenge!\u00c2\u00a0 You can read all about how the other Daring Bakers fared here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, and that flour I ordered?\u00c2\u00a0 STILL not here…<\/p>\n

\"french-bread.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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This is my first month being a part of the Daring Bakers, a super-cool group of bloggers who take on new and exciting baking challenges each month.\u00c2\u00a0 In past months, they’ve tackled Lemon Meringue Pie and Yule Logs.\u00c2\u00a0 February’s challenge was Julia Child’s French Bread, hosted by Breadchick Mary of The Sour Dough and Sara […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bread","category-daring-bakers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}