Recipes
Pastry
Bread
Crusty french bread, definitive version

Crusty french bread, definitive version

Bread

I just returned from working for a few months for Doctors Without Borders in northern Uganda. While I was there a nurse from Brittany named Nathalie taught me to make the crustiest, smoothest, Frenchiest bread I’ve ever eaten. The ingredients are basic: just flour, salt, water and yeast -- and if I can make this bread in the West Nile region of East Africa, then you can make it wherever you are. I’m submitting this recipe exactly as Nathalie taught me to make it. I’m sure there are ways to make it easier and faster (i.e. reduce kneading time, use a mixer, reduce rising times), but I can only vouch for the way I learned to do it. I won’t even convert the flour measurement from kilos to pounds; if you want to make authentic French bread you gotta play by their rules. Kneading the dough for this recipe is not for the faint of heart or weak of hand. It requires invoking your inner 17th century peasant farmer or finding a grounded teenager who could use a good half hour of intense physical labor. The French call bread dough pâte, which literally translates as “paste,” and when you start kneading you’ll see why. Whenever you hear the words “serve with crusty bread” you should use this recipe. It’s ideal with soup, for making sandwiches, or just with salted butter. Use it for sopping up the cheese fondue recipes you’re testing from Food52! You can slice up whatever is left from the loaf, allowing it to get slightly stale overnight, and use it for French toast the next morning. For Christmas dinner in Uganda there was a nationwide natural gas shortage which took our oven out of service, so we modified the recipe and baked small loaves in tin foil in the ashes of a woodfire, like damper from the Outback (thanks to the Australian nurse Rebecca for that idea!). It was absolutely delicious with the foie gras Nathalie brought from home. Enjoy!