French Bread - Part 2

This morning I baked the second loaf of french bread...overall uneventful. However I didn't get a crispy crust like I wanted. When it came out of the oven it felt like it was going to be crispy, but once it cooled it was soft. Not sure what I am missing. The flavor of the this loaf seems to be exactly the same as the first, so I don't think there were any real issues with the primary fermentation of the first loaf. At this point I am pretty sure that the first loaf was just a bit smaller.

OK, so at this point I am already making good bread, but...I still don't think it is great bread. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't be ashamed to serve this bread to anyone, but I doubt it would leave a long lasting impression. The next recipe in the book is "Rustic Bread". It includes instructions for turning it into ciabatta or focaccia and is very similar to the recipe for pizza dough. This sounds like the kind of recipe that would be good to know.

However...to really get into some really interesting flavor, I think we are going to have to explore the wild yeast option...aka sourdough. For sourdough the first step is to make a starter. It takes about 6 days to build a starter and then another day or so to turn the starter into the mother. Once you have your mother you are ready to make some sourdough. Since today is the last day of vacation I expect it will be a couple weeks before the oven sees a loaf of sourdough. Even though the book says "artisan breads every day", I am not sure that I will be up for any weekday baking just yet.

Oh yeah...when building the starter up to a mother you only use half of the starter, so you are supposed to throw out the other half or pass it along to someone...just figured I would put that out there in case anyone is interested.