DB February Challenge: French Bread

This month's challenge, hosted by Mary and Sara, was French Bread. This wasn't like my first bread or anything, and yeast is a friend too :P but it had been ages that I had baked a bread. I remember a funny incident from years and years back, I was baking those braided loaves, I had seen a recipe on TV, and had wanted to try immediately. I remember the chef lovingly calling them his pregnant ladies, as the braids were filled with nuts! Anyway the recipe yielded three loaves, and as I was at third, I couldn't, for the life of me, make that braid! The more I tried, the more the strands kept getting longer! Finally I had to ask my brother and he did it for me!

Anyway that's neither here nor there! Am finally through with my challenge, and thanks to Mary and Sara for kindling some old memories. As I said baking a bread wasn't a first for me, but what was a first was reading and re-reading and re-reading... n times, a recipe this long! Well, that's the fun of being a Daring Baker, doing something you wouldn't otherwise do!

Here's my dough after the preliminary stages.

It wasn't sticky, it wasn't dry, yet I felt it needed some water, so I added a few tablespoons but that didn't make much of a difference I think.

After the first rise, I was kinda pleased with it :P

After the second rise.

Inverted onto a kneading surface...

I decided to make small rolls, the only reason being that I really couldn't make out how I was to transfer the dough from the canvas to the baking tray using a cardboard without completely flattening it. For the small buns (petit pains) it said you had to carefully pick them up and place them on the tray, and that sounded infinitely easier. Here's one of the balls. I don't think they quite tripled, and also I managed to deflate them considerably during slashing.

And yeah that isn't a piece of canvas or linen towel. When it comes to cloth and their types, I am dumb. I was going to ask my mother for the cloth and when I needed it (trust me not to have asked for it before hand) she was taking her afternoon nap, so I waited, waited some more, and then dusted a piece of parchment paper generously with flour.

In the oven.

I think I should have taken these out earlier, it looks a bit over done. And that white flaky thing on top is the flour which got stuck to the bottoms during the final rise!

I found it difficult to slice the bread because of its crust, and found it chewy to eat.

I think this isn't something I'd be making again, but I definitely enjoyed this challenge!

To find out how the rest of the DBer's tackled this challenge visit the blogroll.

Update: I just had one, slicing it in half and toasting it slightly, buttering it generously, finishing with some jam, yum! Also the crust is no longer hard.