There’s nothing quite like the aroma of a fresh baked French baguette steaming on your counter fresh from the oven. While making bread dough can be a little intimidating, don’t be afraid to give it a try. If you have a bread machine, French bread making  becomes even easier. See bottom of the recipe for bread machine variations.

Ingredients

1 package dry yeast (or about 2 1/4 teaspoons if you use jarred yeast, as I do)
1 1/4 cups warm water (between 100 and 110 degrees)
3 cups bread flour, divided
1 teaspoon salt
Cooking spray
1 teaspoon cornmeal

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water in large bowl and let stand five minutes. Gently scoop flour into measuring cups and level them. Add 2 3/4 cups of the flour to the yeast mixture. Mix until a soft dough forms. Cover and let stand 15 minutes.

2. Turn dough out on floured surface and sprinkle with salt. Knead the dough until it is smooth while adding enough of the remainder of flour (a spoonful at a time) to keep it from sticking to your hands.

3. Place dough in large bowl  coated with cooking spray and let rise in a warm place for about 40 minutes.  Punch dough down, cover and let rest five minutes.

4. Divide dough in half. Working with one portion at a time, roll each section into a 12″ rope and place on baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Lightly coat with cooking spray, cover and let rise 20 minutes.

5. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

6. Uncover the dough, cut three diagonal slits across the top of each loaf (approximately 2″ long) and bake for twenty minutes at 450 degrees until loaves are browned on the bottom.

BREAD MACHINE VARIATION: I combined steps one through three by adding the ingredients to my breadmaker and selecting the “dough” cycle. I was able to pick up at step four once the dough cycle was complete.

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