Basic Chef Gosselin Bread Recipe

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Basic Bread Recipe

Bread is easy to make. Flour, yeast and water are the three main ingredients. If you add a pinch of salt, a few tablespoons of olive oil and a small amount of sugar, the rise and texture will become smooth and more palatable.  But you do not need add the extras if you want desire the pure and plain. Here is my recipe for the bread I bake weekly at home. Chime in on this topic anytime by forwarding your comments.

Basic Chef Gosselin Bread Recipe

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp yeast

2 tbsp cooking oil or olive oil

1 cup warm water

I use my Kitchenaid mixer with dough hook for the dough kneading portion of this recipe preparation. Long ago I learned to move towards technology and save my wrists from the pounding of making bread but you can knead out the dough with ease on a floured counter top. I will describe the process as if we were in my home cooking area.

I start by placing the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, oil then water into my mixing bowl in that order. I use NO fancy “feed the yeast” starter technique. I lock the mixer head in place because the mixer is going under a load and I set the dough hook to mix on setting 1 or 2. As the water /flour forms a dough ball and the stretch forms I look for a nice uniform dough ball and will stop my mixer and pull the dough off the hook and start the mixer repeatedly if I think my dough is not blending smoothly.

After about 3-5 min of mixer work I transfer my dough ball from the mixer bowl to a stainless bowl sprayed with a non stick food spray (Pam) and cover with a dinner plate. If I am really enthused I will take a second stainless bowl and put warm to warm/hot water in that bowl and set my dough rise bowl into the warm water bowl to hasten the rise.

When the dough has doubled in size or the plate is being touched by the dough ball, I will punch it down and deflate it a bit. I let it rise again (about 2 hours total).

Now comes your artistic form….what do you want your bread to become???? If you want mini baguettes like I love to toast each morning, you will form some elongated dough snakes by rolling the dough out on the lightly floured counter top or working the dough in your hands in a squeezing, rolling fashion until the baguette form is created. You can make a really big baguette or several smaller ones by dividing the dough out. I usually make 2 or 3 from my dough ball. Lay your formed baguette on a sprayed sheet pan with its fellow baguettes spaced nicely and place to rest off to the side with a little flour over them and a light clean kitchen towel. I mostly never cover mine…but my home is kept quite warm. Just before you place in the oven you will use a razor or sharp knife and slit the baguette in a few places diagonally. This lets some escaping vapor come out as the dough puffs up in the heat.

Preheat the over to 450F ….yhep you use a nice hot over to get that dough to form light and airy inside. Many artisan bakers use a 700F Bee Hive type ceramic grill over to bake their bread. But I do not have that sweet tool in my home so I use my electric oven at 450F and it does a great job.

After the preheat is finished (15min)…place your sheet pan in the oven with shelf in center position. Let bake until baguettes are nice and brown.

When you are happy with the color of your baked baguettes… take them from oven and place on racks to cool.

Bon Appetite