French Bread
I've made artisan bread by hand many times in the past, but the arrival of the "industrial strength"
KitchenAid mixer in January 2008 provided a huge leap forward. My particular model (Professional
600 – a 6-quart bowl-lift mixer) has a special spiral dough hook. This relatively new design kneads
dough in two minutes, which is equivalent to 10 minutes of manual kneading.
I've enjoyed experimenting with various French bread recipes – the variation in technique across the
recipes is quite remarkable, although there are only four ingredients (flour, yeast, salt, and water). I
have two favorite recipes – one of which requires a "starter" (called a "poolish") which must be made
the night before and is very similar to the technique for sourdough. The key to both recipes is
cooking on an oven (pizza) stone, and adding boiling water to produce steam in the oven. Here are
those two recipes:
French Bread
French Bread with Poolish
KitchenAid mixer in January 2008 provided a huge leap forward. My particular model (Professional
600 – a 6-quart bowl-lift mixer) has a special spiral dough hook. This relatively new design kneads
dough in two minutes, which is equivalent to 10 minutes of manual kneading.
I've enjoyed experimenting with various French bread recipes – the variation in technique across the
recipes is quite remarkable, although there are only four ingredients (flour, yeast, salt, and water). I
have two favorite recipes – one of which requires a "starter" (called a "poolish") which must be made
the night before and is very similar to the technique for sourdough. The key to both recipes is
cooking on an oven (pizza) stone, and adding boiling water to produce steam in the oven. Here are
those two recipes:
French Bread
French Bread with Poolish
