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

Good grief! I suppose it is just my inexperience, but after all these years of following the cant of my 14 books on baking, reading all the thoughts, advice, even nasty comments here, I find a loaf that is good for me.

I have sought, as some others have stated they have on here, a French Bread that tasted like the old New Orleans French Bread I was raised on. I could get a good, thin, crispy crust, but the taste and crumb always seemed either too dense, to holey and the taste seemed to miss . . . the ultimate po' boy French Bread seemed to be in the past.