In spite of repeated promises over the years, I do not have the voluminous Rolodex of recipe cards my mother has kept, which is filled, no, overstuffed and overflowing with family recipes going back more than a hundred years.
I memorized one of my favorites, from my great grandmother Honey (who was a pistol):
Recipe for toast
First you burn it, then you scrape it, then it’s done.
Family humor at its finest. Grandma Honey actually wrote this on a note card and put it in the recipe box. Like I said, she was a pistol.
Family humor aside, one of the joys I have discovered over the years is how fully satisfying baking your own bread can be. I did a short stint in a bakery, but my joy of baking really began when I was much younger. I still to this day remember long sunny afternoons in the kitchen, with Mom using the GIANT stainless steel mixing bowl and the wonderful, mythical dragon that was her Kitchen Aid stand mixer to make the most amazing loaves of bread. She taught me to follow recipes, and how to bake, but I’ve never really found that one loaf that made me think, “Hmm. I got this …” until last night.
Since I don’t have the massive recipe Rolodex my mother hoards, I used The Googles. I chose the first recipe for French bread I found, figuring, “what the heck? The worst that can go wrong is we have something different for diner” (We decided we wanted oven-toasted hoagies. I wasn’t into going to the store to buy rolls when I could bake perfectly good bread right in my own home).
I rolled up my figurative sleeves, fired up my stand mixer, and got cracking.
Here’s the link to the recipe I found: https://www.modernhoney.com/homemade-bakery-french-bread/?fbclid=IwAR0isvxncCEscGfapSddYyYllXjfg2_6bxijTY2HR5SvfByhXbKS-wwb3lE
I’m not going to recreate what the recipe’s author has already written – I’m just going to add that I made a “mistake,” that turned out miraculous, and is probably why this ended up being the best bread I’ve ever baked. The recipe says to mix the sugar with the flour and water while the yeast is proofing separately. The recipe calls for two tablespoons of yeast, but I only had about 1 and 1/4 (time to go buy more, or finally nut up and make a sourdough starter). Since I was short on yeast, I figured my best bet was to feed what yeast I had, rather than hope it would profligate in the dough. The result was a wonderful, perfectly textured, light, fluffy, and VERY active while rising, loaf of the most fabulous French bread I’ve ever had.
Another note – this was the first time I’ve made French bread outside of working in an actual bakery, where the ovens are MUCH more spacious than what most of us have in our homes. I made the mistake of trying to bake three loaves on one cookie sheet – they stuck together, as you can see, and I had to separate them and put them back in the oven for a few more minutes to finish the centers. Easily solved, though. I know next time to put two of the three loaves on one sheet, far enough apart that they won’t touch while baking, and bake the third on a separate sheet.
Another great thing about this recipe is it only takes about an hour and a half from start to finish. It was absolutely perfect for a last-minute “what am I going to do for dinner” scenario.
One thing I will warn you about with this loaf: I had the overwhelming urge, after tasting it, to immediately go outside and begin building a brick oven so I could bake these wood fired!
My end result: a magnificent hoagie on wonderful homemade bread!
Conestoga Chuck 