The Bread of MY Life: French-Style Bread

This is The Bread of MY Life feature that my friend Eileen will be sharing with us each Thursday:

French-Style Bread

SUPER easy and SUPER fast, and SUPER Yummy.

It’s not an EXACT french loaf. I guess there’s a lot of science and stuff to getting the perfect French bread loaf, but Beard says this is close enough for his taste. I can’t tell the difference between my loaves and the ones I get at the store, so it’s good enough for me.

It felt SO good to have dough in my hands again. I was waiting for us to finish up the last few loaves of bread before I made more. NOT a good idea. I was going though baking withdrawals! Even my husband says I was a little more snippy around people and I needed to go bake something. It’s funny, I take on this challenge to learn how to bake bread to see if it helps me to relax more or not stress out so much. And I’m shocked to see it doing just that. Looks like I’m finally finding a skill that makes ME happy, and so the people around me are happier too.

I was even able to go for a walk with a good friend of mine while the dough was rising. So it was double therapy today. Had some exercise to boost up those endorphins, was able to talk though a few stresses with my friend that were bothering me lately, AND I made some bread. Ok, so I guess that’s triple therapy. The point is, I feel like I’m finally able to relax now because I’ve had this awesomely therapeutic morning. I feel like I can LET GO of a few things now and move on without worrying about what might happen.

Anyway, got the bread in the oven and it got that awesome crisp that I love about french bread. I couldn’t wait until it cooled this time… just cut off an end and started munching on it. It was very good. I think it’s exactly what I needed. Good news is I may be making the next loaf sooner than later, because this bread won’t last long with me eyeballing it.