It’s long past the time when making bread is something I am doing so I can have real French bread. I have fully accepted my inability to make that happen. Now I am just making bread for the sake of eating it. Of course, secretly, there is always the hope that it’s gonna turn out to be French bread at which point my hands will fly to my cheeks in mild shock and I will exclaim something like “Oh, goodness!” Just kidding, I will scream something in French, possibly the Marseillaise. The problem will be that I absolutely will not remember how I accomplished it.
This time I was using a 100% hydration recipe that is commonly used for ciabatta. That means equal parts water and flour. It seemed like it might work. Why I thought that would work making French bread escapes me. But it looked good in the YouTube (see here). The “dough” however was more like a batter and stuck to everything it could get its slimy hands on including the parchment paper I’d let it rise on. Eventually I just put the damn mess in the oven sticking to the paper.
It tasted good. It was not French bread. And it was flat. Many things can taste good while at the same time being ugly, bread is not one of them. It has to be pretty or at least relatively attractive.
It’s lovely, Michael :o) !
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.