I have avoided any semblance of baking or pastry-making my whole life, but given my love for fresh-out-of-the oven baguettes and batardes and their expense at the supermarket ($3!), I have started thinking about giving it a go myself.
Any advice or encouragement?
I have an oven of unknown quality and some run-of-the-mill cookie/baking sheets, and of course I have plenty of plastic wrap. Will I need any other specific equipment?
You’ll want a stone for baking the bread on. You can get one that’s marketed as a “pizza stone.” If you’re going for french-style crusty bread you’ll want a spritzer bottle for creating steam in the oven. Wire rack for letting the bread cool. A good book. I’ve recommended The Bread Baker’s Apprentice in at least one other thread.
Thanks for the advice!
It’s hard to make real French-style baguettes at home; you really need a professional oven to do it right. I’ve done them using a Cook’s Illustrated recipe, but it took something like 2 days and was a heck of a lot of work. Much easier to buy them.
That said, if you’re just looking for decent bread, there’s a lot you can do. One easy and really good starter recipe is this no-knead bread. It takes a whole day to rise, but it’s very little real work, and it turns out great.
This is my first post here, but I think I might be able to help you out.
I wanted to make baguettes and failed, miserably, several times. But then I found this recipe and have been using it for a couple months now. It’s simple and though it uses a stand mixer I’m sure you could do the kneading by hand.
It makes two pretty good baguettes. I’ve also used it to make one good sized loaf and it works for that as well. Hope this helps.
Norm
edited to add:
A friend of mine who is a baker told me to simulate the steam by putting a few ice cubes on a tray below the one your bread is baking on. Also I line my sheets with parchment paper.
Nice! These are all great suggestions.
Bread, even very TASTY bread, is EASY.
Baguettes, with their unique, hard, crackly crust and light inside are HARD. I’ve never really managed them, and I’ve tried a lot of methods that purport to give good results. =/
I recommend learning to like challah instead. 
Question: I don’t have a stand mixer. Can I substitute a food processor?
If you just like fresh bread, and you’re not sold on baguettes/batards, may I suggest;
Tastes good, has a good crust, is really low-effort. What’s not to love?
I have a good recipe at work, can’t get to it just now, I’ll try and post it tomorrow.
In the meantime, I’ve also done the following recipe, and it’s pretty good too, and not difficult.
Someone who is a more experienced bread baker could give a better answer, but in my limited experience a food processor doesn’t really work for bread. A stand mixer usually has a dough hook attachment that can be used to knead the dough (instead of kneading by hand). Some food processors say they can knead dough (you use a special plastic blade, rather than the usual metal blade), but the only time I tried it was a massive fail. Maybe if you had a better quality food processor than I had it would work better.
Edit to add: Google is telling me that food processors knead the dough so quickly that it’s easy to overwork the dough and ruin it, and the excessive heat from the fast kneading can kill the yeast
You can make bread dough in a food processor, but you do it differently than you would with a stand mixer. With a food processor, you put in all the dry ingredients, turn it on, and then gradually pour in the water. This way the machine won’t stall.
For most breads it works better to use bread flour instead of all-purpose. Bread flour has more gluten, so it produces a stretchier dough that rises better, and makes bread with a better texture.
I don’t know what affect this will have on the French breads you want to make, but in the limited bread making that I do I try to include a lot of semolina flour. It’s very high gluten, has wonderful flavor, and seems to me to make it easier to determine the quality of the dough by feel. It is a coarse grained flour and usually more water is needed in the recipes.
First you need a proper oven. Here is how to build an inexpensive one out of clay and sand.
http://www.squidoo.com/building-an-earth-oven-cob-oven
Then you need to spend hours fussing over the correct ratios of flour/water/salt/yeast sticking slavishly to recipes and technique passed down in mystic ceremonies performed in stone bakeries in the middle of the night under the full moon.
Ok, actually, the oven is nice, and to get accurate representation of different types of bread you need to follow the recipes. But, bread is pretty basic stuff. As long as ‘man’ has had grain and an ability to heat it, there has been some sort of bread.
What you really need:
[ul]
[li]An oven that can reach at least 425F.[/li][li]If you’re not confident in the dial on your oven, an oven thermometer. Fire up the oven, set it to 350F and see what the thermometer says. Increase to 375F, repeat reading of thermometer, 400F, 425F, 450F.[/li][li]A cooking thermometer for checking doneness.[/li][li]A bowl for rising the dough, bigger is better, but scale it to the largest batch of risen dough you expect to make. The mixed dough should have enough room to double. The doubled dough should be about the same size as the final bread if it was a single loaf.[/li][li]A place to knead dough. Large, flat, and attached well to the floor. Your kitchen counter will probably work fine, but I’ve needed dough on a bowl, a cooler, a bench covered with a towel, and a folding table (I make bread camping, and reenacting the 18th century).[/li][li]A sheet pan, or if you’re using a baking stone a peel.[/li][li]Flour, water, salt, yeast. Other ingredients are optional but can make nice changes to bread. Oil, butter, milk, eggs, seeds, spices, cheese, meat, sugar, etc…[/li][li]A knife to slash the tops to prevent ‘breakouts’ during the baking ‘oven spring’[/li][li]Plastic wrap or a tea towel to cover the loaves during rising.[/li][li]Time[/li][li]Patience[/li][li]Willing tasters (these are generally easy to find)[/li][/ul]
What’s nice to have;
[ul]
[li]A fancy wood fired oven. (really nice to have, but a major commitment. Makes great pizza and baked goods! See link above, but most of my bread comes from my kitchen oven.)[/li][li]Baskets (bannetons) to rise bread in and give fancy patterns/shapes to the loaf.[/li][li]Bread pans. Used for standard “sandwich loaf” shaped bread, or other specialty breads.[/li][li]Specialty ingredients as mentioned above.[/li][li]A thousand other things that aren’t really needed, but catch your eye in kitchen stores / restaurant supply stores. (grain mills, lames (for slashing bread), sourdough starters, dough conditioners, storage bins, bags, etc)[/li][/ul]
Start with a simple loaf.
3 to 3 1/2 cups flour, 1 cup water, 1 Tbs salt, 1Tsp (or packet) yeast. Mix until it comes together as a moist dough that is not overly sticky. Add more flour/water (flour by tablespoon, water by 1/2 teaspoon) to adjust as needed. Knead on a floured surface (replace flour as needed to keep from sticking) for 5-10 minutes (push with the heel of your palm. Fold over top, turn 1/4 turn, repeat) until the dough feels soft and smooth (think baby bottom).
Oil a bowl, and the dough ball, let rise until doubled in size. When doubled, turn it out onto a floured surface. Poke it flat with your fingertips (don’t work every last bubble out). Fold into thirds. Flatten, repeat folding into thirds. Let rest 5 minutes. Cut into loaf sizes and shape as desired. (I like simple round or oval loaves). Put on a baking tray sprinkled with corn meal. Cover (plastic wrap, or a moistened tea towel) Let rise until doubled in size.
Preheat oven to 425F. Put a pan on the bottom of the oven. Boil some water while preheating.
Slash a nice X (or other pattern) with a sharp knife onto the top of the loaves. Insert baking tray, pour boiling water into pan (steam helps the crust formation). Turn oven down to 375F, and bake until the internal temperature of the loaf is 200F and it makes a nice thumping/hollow sound when you tap the bottom of the loaf.
Everything else is experimentation. A ‘bad loaf’ is still generally edible, and a way to learn how to make better bread. I’ve been hobby baking for 10 years or so, and I make pretty good bread, but I’m always learning a new technique or why something changes the final product.
This is fantastic! Thanks so much.
Questions:
Are an oven thermometer and a cooking thermometer two different things or can they be combined?
Will a steel or aluminum mixing bowl work?
Towel: anything in particular or just the cheap kitchen towels that I have?
Sheet pan: again anything in particular or the run-of-the-mill cookie sheets I have?
An oven thermometer tells you how hot the oven is. It sits on or hangs from a rack. A cooking thermometer is something you stick into food to see if it’s done.
Them’s the ones. But the more experienced bakers may want to comment.