Haven’t tried this yet…Every time I think about making it, the oven is on and warm, and you’ll see from this recipe you mustn’t turn on the oven until the bread is put into it.
Shouldn’t imagine this bread will keep, but proper French Sticks don’t. They’re stale by the next day.
And apparently you don’t need to use strong white bread flour. Plain without any sort of raising agent is what the recipe I copied said.
1 Sachet of dried yeast. 7 grams?
16 fluid ounces of lukewarm water
1 tablespoon salt
1-1/2 – 2lbs plain white flour. Not sure why there’s such a disparity.
Put the yeast into the warm water in a large bowl. Leave for 5-10 minutes.
Mix the salt with the flour.
Add the flour to the water yeast mix, one cup at a time.
Beat in with a wooden spoon until the dough is smooth
Knead until elastic.
Leave to prove for 2-4 hours
Put onto a floured board. Shape into two long thin loaves.
Place on baking sheet.
Leave for 5 minutes
Score the tops, brush with water
Put a pan of boiling water in the bottom of a COLD OVEN!!!!
Put the bread in
Turn oven to 200c and bake for 40 mins….
Damn, that is different.
And that’s a coolish oven for that kind of bread even without starting out with it cold.
Normally you’d put the bread in a hot (230 or so) oven, then dump the boiling water in the pan so as to make a mountain of steam in a hurry.
The second rise time is short, too. I guess they’re thinking that slowly warming the bread up in the climbing oven will kick off the yeast big time, giving a lot of oven spring before it gets hot enough to kill the little buggers.
I just might have to play with that, though I’d have to begin with a sourdough “poolish” the night before, just to get that flavor kick. Maybe spike it with a little commercial yeast too, to get that oven spring.
Interesting.
Thought you might enjoy seeing it. If it’s a genuine way to make French sticks, it’ll go hard very quickly. You can soften it by damping it down, and then putting it in the oven for a coupe of minutes.
I don’t mind because I make bread pudding with leftovers.