Crusty Bread and My New tools

Made a classic French boule bread yesterday and I got to use some of my new Pampered Chef stuff in a nice way, 

namely my Classic Batter Bowl

and my Large Round Stone with Handles

I used the recipe in Julia Child's The Way to Cook, though any number of French bread recipes would do it here.  This recipe uses 3.5 cups flour and makes 3 18" baguettes or 1 12" boule, and it doesn't use a poolish or starter.  I doubled the yeast because I just didn't have the time for the slower rises.

The ingredients are:
1 pkg yeast
1/3 cup water
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3.5 cups flour
1 Tbs whole wheat flour
2 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup water

but Julia's instructions are very well done and very detailed--I recommend taking a look at the book.


I usually just eyeball the dough during rises, but Julia is a little particular about how much it should increase in each rise, so to make things easier on myself I dumped the dough into my batter bowl with the measure on the side and found it a nice way to see how much it had risen compared to the initial size.

Then, to get the perfect bake, I put my baking stone into the hot oven for about 20 minutes to get nice and hot for baking the bread on.  Once I had the dough shaped and risen, slashed and ready to go, I just used my large cutting board as a peel and slid the dough onto the stone.

Ended up with a very nice loaf of bread with a beautiful crust--check out the underside of that thing.

I make bread fairly often, though not always artisan style, of course.  Still, it's fun once in a while to make something very special.