Rustic French Bread

From: gadgetman0404

On Nov 21, 2008

This bread was wonderful. I found lots of other bread recipes that accomplish the same thing but are inordinately complicated. Seriously, I love baking bread, but there are limited hours in the day and if the recipe is overly involved I'm likely never to use it. I found that I needed more flour (not sure how much since I just added until the feel was correct). Instead of loaves, I formed the dough into smaller round loaves. I'm excited to try this again and feel like the recipe will be an excellent base for herbed breads — next version will be a cracked pepper bread ... mmmm!

From: Tanner's Mom in Virginia

On Jan 19, 2007

This bread turned out very good with a couple of modifications. I ended up having to use 5 1/4 cups of flour instead of the 4 1/2 to get the dough to come together enough to get it out of the bowl. Also, I'm not sure if it's my oven or not but 450 degrees was too high a temp and the 1st loaf I had to turn off the oven after 20 minutes because it was already dark and crusty. The 2nd loaf I baked at 425 and baked it for 25 mins, then took it right out of the oven because it also was already dark and crusty. I found no reason to leave it in the oven any longer. All in all though the bread is very good! Next time I'll go down to 400 degrees and maybe make individual crusty loaves with this dough.

From: GaylaJ

On Apr 27, 2007

I thought this was excellent bread. I love working with preferments, as the resulting flavor of the bread is so much better developed. I held the sponge overnight in the fridge, used part all-purpose and part bread flour, and lazily let the KitchenAid do the kneading. I do not usually mention adding extra flour when reviewing yeast bread recipes, as anyone who has experience with bread dough is quite aware that, for several reasons, adjustments are inevitable. (To be honest, I usually don't even pay attention to exactly how much flour I add as I'm concentrating on getting the dough to the consistency I think appropriate.) Anyway, I did leave the dough on the wet side (I think a wetter dough makes better rustic-type bread), so I dusted the formed loaves pretty heavily with flour before covering them for proofing. Rather than round loaves scored with an X, I made oblong loaves and scored diagonally. I did reduce the temp to 425F, but only because I was baking in a convection oven. I forgot to notice the baking time, but they were done pretty quickly. Great recipe--thanks for posting!