Fresh-Milled French Bread

This is practical home-oven French bread rather than a contest baguette: two slim loaves with crackling crust, a useful moderately open crumb, and enough fresh-milled wheat to taste like grain instead of air.

Ingredients

• 400 g fresh-milled hard white wheat flour
• 100 g organic bread flour
• 350 g water, divided
• 10 g fine salt
• 5 g instant yeast
• 10 g honey, optional
• Semolina or parchment for the pan

Baker’s percentages

Method

1. Combine both flours with 330 g water. Rest 25 minutes.
2. Add salt, yeast, and optional honey. Mix until elastic, adding reserved water only if the dough can hold it.
3. Bulk ferment 75–105 minutes, giving two folds during the first 45 minutes. Stop at about 70% growth.
4. Divide in half, pre-shape into short logs, cover, and rest 15 minutes.
5. Shape each piece into a 14–16-inch bâtard, keeping surface tension without squeezing out all the gas.
6. Proof seam-side down on parchment or a floured couche until puffy, 35–55 minutes. Heat oven and baking stone or steel to 450°F with an empty metal steam pan below.
7. Score each loaf three or four times. Load the bread and pour 1 cup boiling water into the steam pan. Bake 12 minutes, remove the steam pan if safe, then bake 12–18 minutes more.
8. Cool at least 60 minutes before slicing.

Make it well

Steam only at the beginning. Lingering steam softens the crust.

A stone or steel improves the bottom crust, but an inverted heavy sheet pan also works.

For sandwich-soft bread, choose the Soft Sandwich Loaf; this recipe is meant to have a real crust.

Guides for better bread

Start with the Fresh-Milled Flour Guide, use the Fresh-Milled Flour Hydration Chart, and troubleshoot with Why Is My Fresh-Milled Bread Dense? and Why Is My Fresh-Milled Dough So Sticky?.