These are the "famous" french baguettes from the Kayser bakery rue Monge in Paris.

I upped the hydration level, but didn't really calculate. The recipe here is the original and I don't know how it would work with american flour, so if anyone wants to try, keep an eye on the dough.

I also would leave them to rise a bit longer next time, but we were in a rush to go on a picnic (the fated one where I broke my pinky!) I thought the crumb should be a bit more open. They are really good, though. Obviously not sour because the sourdough doesn't have the time to react, but it sure gives great oven spring.

Baguettes "Monge"

500 g farine T65 (or maybe just white bread flour?)

100g liquide starter at it's peak

5g fresh yeast (or about 3/4 tsp fast acting package yeast I think)

10 g salt

270 ml water at 20°C

Mix the fresh yeast with water and leave 20 min to ferment.

Then make a regular dough using your method. Put the dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Let it rest 20 min.

Take the dough out and divide it into three pieces. Form three equal size balls and leave them on the counter to rise, covered with a damp cloth, 40 min.

Form three baguettes with pointed ends, place them in a baguette banneton or on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

Cover with a damp cloth and let rise 1 1/2 hrs.

Preheat oven to 220°C. Sprinkle flour on the baguettes and do the incisions. Do the water thing (coup de buée) and place your baguettes in the oven.

Leave them to back around 20-25 minutes.

I realize that I seriously risk tanking my whole grain cred, here, but lately ... I've been taking a shine to poolish. It'd been a long time since I'd worked with yeasted pre-ferments, and aside from an occasional baguette here and there, I'd not make a serious white bread in quite some time.

But after the New Year, in the course of just a couple of days, I made three poolish baguettes and one poolish ciabatta.

I used Jeffrey Hamelman's masterpiece Bread as a guide.

I've only had the pleasure of visiting San Francisco twice, and both times it was on business. But I made sure to stop by the ACME Bread Co.

Hello everyone,

I have never made the French bread in the BBA, so I thought I'd try it. After trying so many unusual or specialty breads, I wanted to go back to a classic. This version uses pate fermentee (sorry, I'm not conversant enough in HTML or whatever it'd take to include the correct French accent marks), risen a bit at room temperature, then put into the fridge overnight. The dough is made the next day. I did three stretch and fold cycles at 30 minute intervals during a 2-hour fermentation. The proof after shaping was about 50 minutes.

I need a quick and easy way to make french bread with out using a starter !
is there any one out there that can help me ?

What in damnation is a northern boy doing trying to make a traditional New Orleans Po-Boy? I haven't scarfed down one of those delicious handfuls in quite a while. But once bitten it's near impossible to get past the memory. After many failed attempts, I now believe that I am on the right track and have found a formula and procedure that gets pretty darn close. There is still some adjustment needed with the time and temp to get the crust at the right color when the crumb is just right but it's close now. At least to my recollection. I'll post the bread formula below.

Folks here might be interested in this article

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25351-2645701,00.html

which is a review of a book on the history of French bread. Lots of info re commercial use of sourdough.

After years of making baguettes with almost every type of AP unbleached white flour commercially available, I decided that bringing type 55 flour to the US would be the only way to solve the famed baguette debate. I researched flour suppliers and found one from Turkey. If you have ever been to Turkey, you know how good their bread is. In fact, their standard loaf is much like the bâtard and many mills in Turkey supply flour to France, including the one I have sourced for my flour.

If French bread is so good why don't we see more of it in the U.S.?  I've read so many articles praising the quality of French bread and even more from frustrated bakers who can't come close to duplicating it.  It wouldn't take much to obtain some French wheat grain, bring it to North America and grow it.  I think that I've found one answer as to why this hasn't happened.  It's not that their flour is so much better.  It's that the French flour is so much worse, or to put it in less inflammatory words, French flour has less protein.  North American ba