As you can guess by my previous posts, I've kinda gotten into making bread lately. It's about time really, because bread has been pretty insanely priced for quite a while. For anything resembling a nice loaf you're talking at least $5 here. Some are as high as $12. I shit you not. So that means we gotta try to find the cheapest bread possible, if we want any. Or, do as I'm doing lately, and actually start trying to make our own bread.
So, I've been trying to find recipes for bread that I want to try out. With that in mind, I decided to try out this recipe when I saw it.
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (1 packet)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cups warm water
4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
Olive oil
1 tablespoon corn meal
It seemed pretty easy enough and I had all the ingredients. Plus the name seemed interesting and the pictures they had were nice. Unfortunately, I tried to do two long loafs due to space constraints. I should have just done one long loaf or two balls side by side and not worried about them possibly going together.
I started with the warm water, sugar, and yeast, similarly to the other bread that I made. Well...the other one also had cooking of oats.
This yeast actually turned out to be way better. I dunno if it was the age of the yeast...probably... But I really liked how foamy it got.
After the yeast sat and foamed at the mouth for a bit I mixed it with 3 cups flour and 1 teaspoon salt. I decided to vary the recipe, because it was pretty similar to the other one, and that was a bit salty for me. I guess I'm more sensitive to salt than most people.
The recipe called for mixing in a bowl with a wooden spoon. Perhaps I should have tried that. But I didn't. I used a mixer. If I do try this recipe again, maybe I'll try using a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon. But I doubt I will...
The dough was way too sticky because the recipe didn't have nearly enough flour to the amount of water. After making it, I think that was kind of the point. The recipe specifically said to not get it too dry. Unfortunately I ended up using a ton of extra flour just trying to work with it to get it to not stick to everything. Part of that might be how humid it is here. Part of it might actually be intentional. Apparently you're supposed to use oil on your hands to work with it. It was a pain in the ass.
I would have to get used to it if I ever did this recipe again. It's a pain in the ass. Oh...I already said that. Well...it was a really big pain in the ass. It stuck to everything. I dunno how I would work with it. I guess I would have to split it in the bowl I used to let it rise in...which I totally forgot to post the picture of. Cuz it's so important that you see the dough all puffy.
That is really good yeast.
Not pictured is the pain in the ass I went through trying to split the fucker. My hands were absolutely covered in sticky dough. And I still had to add a bunch of flour just to get the fucker to not stick too much to everything. That probably fucked up the recipe a bit.
I managed to get the dough into two pretty equal loaves though. I almost forgot to put the corn shittles down first. That was nearly a disaster. I remembered after it barely touched the wax paper and it stuck like a fucker on it. I had to use a rubber spatula to try to get it off.
Also not pictured is how they looked like two Stay Puft turds in the oven. I kinda forgot to do that whole slice thingie down the loaves.
They ended up looking pretty ugly. But they're actually not that bad. A bit hard. I even tried this tip from 
Something like this might not be so bad with a soup. I ended up eating some of it with some spaghetti marinara last night. Was really good...but a bit hard...like all french bread. If I did try this recipe again, I might try it with a bit of flax seed meal. That really softened up that oat bread.
Might be really good to do a similar recipe with a bit of flax in one long loaf.
In the end though, I don't think I'm gonna try this recipe again. It was far too annoying. I'd have to be a lot more careful with dealing with the flour. I guess I would be more prepared to deal with it next time though. But it's really just a normal white bread. The only thing "peasant" about it is that they didn't spend the money on the flour to perfect the recipe.
I don't really suggest this recipe. I'll be trying to look for some rye flour or maybe just get some wheat to try some other recipes. French bread is way too fucking hard. In multiple ways.