How I Learned to Bake French Bread in the South of France
Baking Bread at Home
The flour, salt, water, oven, and natural wild yeast or commercial yeast used cause enormous variations in the bread produced. If you care to try your hand at it, you might wish to start with simpler recipes than those used in Robion. Here are some suggestions.
I think the easiest, most delicious homemade bread is from the boule recipe by baker Jim Lahey, the owner of New York’s Sullivan Street Bakery who has devised an easier way to get a flavorful crusty bread—duplicating Mr. Honorat’s steam-injected oven—than anyone else has devised. He has written a lovely book you might find interesting, and variations of this recipe and videos to help you make it are all over the internet.
If yours is a smaller home and you’d prefer to make smaller loaves using the same general method, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Hertzberg and Francois, and its companion books are for you. The authors have a lively website which offers assistance. I am especially fond of their foolproof and delicious brioche dough recipe.
Should you feel even more adventurous, Chicago’s French Pastry School offers the best recipe for Fougasse, a traditional provencal bread, filled with your choice of sun dried tomatoes or olives.
Finally, available online is baker Anis Bouabsa’s baguette formula which I have found to be the closest to the real thing for home bakers.
Click here for Part 2:
How to Shop for Wine in the South of France
And check out more on enjoying food and drink at PJ Lifestyle:
A beautiful recounting of what anyone who has lived in France remembers best — those incredible baguettes, those pains au chocolat, those croissants! Great photos too, I’m looking forward to the next installment on wine….
Love that photo of the oven!
What a fabulous trip. Thanks for sharing your experience and the great links. I’m somewhat intimidated by the baguette recipe, but will try Jim Lahey’s bread recipe. I’m looking forward to your report from wine country.
Start with that and you’ll find it’s so easy you’ll be addicted, Next thing you know you’ll be making brioche and fougasse. XOXO
Magnifique!
The effort of baking my own bread? Sure. I do that on a fairly regular basis, and new recipes are usually fun.
Converting the barbaric metric and Centigrade into civilized measurements? Not so much. The taint would linger.
I can smell and taste them now. And for that reason you have earned my undying hatred.
YUM!
I can almost smell the air and taste the wine!
What a great article.
I lived in San Francisco the first 35 years of my life, we would party on weekends and always end up at the early morning bake shops. This brought back some great memories.
More like this please.
1) Can’t eat too much bread anymore. Have to watch the carbs.
2) Great bread or not, this is France we are talking about. A place that hates America, hates Israel, loves failed Marxism, loves the Jihadists (who are taking over slowly but surely), and where Jews cannot walk the street safely. Why on earth would you admire or emulate ANYTHING from that sorry place?
there’s more hate from your side and from the bigots
Bulgaria anyone?
The Freanch will never forgive Americans for D-Day. Just like they never forgave the Pied-Noirs (French citizens born in North-AZfrica most of them of Italian or Spanish ascent) who gave their life at Cassino while the Gallics wer laughuing their a..s in their prisoners camps while others were doing what should have been their job.
Eric;
You are speaking of Paris and the official French government. I disliked DeGalle as much as anyone and never traveled to France while he was alive. However, I have spent many wonderful weekends and nights there whilst stationed in Stuttgart. Alsace is grand, but the south of France is simply wonderful. The food, the wine and the people make it what it is and not even the French government have ruined that.
we can say the same for your governments
I have visited Paris twice and Normandy once. I get the feeling that Parisians just don’t like people in general, but everywhere we went in Normandy last year, the locals were wonderful. Perhaps it’s because they are still mindful of what we did during the D-Day landings, or maybe they’re just nice in general.
So I wouldn’t judge an entire country by what a handful of their elites do, just like I hope we are not judged by what goes on in certain “centers of power” along the East Coast.
this has nothing to do with Dday,the Normans aren’t disturbed by 80 millions yearly visitors like the Parisians are, who ask 80 million times the same questions, who make the same reflexions and complains…
But not all the Parisians are rude
As arrogance and massacring Jews go, they’re nothing compared to the Roman Empire at its height. So why are you using the latter’s letters when you write?
Eric don’t put French rural areas in the same bag with Paris and big cities. These are Muslim-free and despite Paris and Commies best efforts usually not anti-american. And don’t forget those volunteer groups who flower american graces or those people who, from their own pockets (this could seem no big deal in America but in countries with high taxes and extended welfare donations are not usual so it was a big deal), funded a monument at Omaha Beach and fought teeth and nails when the govenrment tried to have it demolished.
Nice article, nicely done, and thanks for the links.
Why is that area called “The south of France,” and not “southern France”?
because, there’s no economical and political differences between the north and the south like there are in Italy, whereas the south is called “Mezzogiorno”
That’s the opposite of what I’d expect, then. After all, we call the US South “The South” because there ARE economical and political differences.
Tuesday 10 July 2012
US drought threatens price of food as hot weather fries corn. Parched fields drives up price of corn, with higher prices likely to be passed on in the cost of hamburgers, steak and bread.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/11/us-drought-threatens-food
Alas, several members of our family were diagnosed with Celiac Disease/Gluten Sensitivity a few years ago, so no wheat-based breads for us.
We do walk by bakeries and inhale deeply, though – my husband calls it “Food Porn”….
This all looks so delicious!