After much putting off I finally got down and dirty (covered in flour) to the Febuary Daring Bakers Task. This month was hosted by Breadchick Mary from The Sour Dough and Sara from I Like to Cook.  The recipe is Julia Child’s French Bread (recipe here).

 At first I was daunted by the recipe but once I got started things went ok…..ish.

 So all of the stages of kneading and rising went very well, the dough was lovely and smooth to work with. When I got to the final rising of the loaves, that is where it all went wrong. All I had that resembled linen for the dough to rise on was some cotton tea towels, I coated them in flour and figured it would be fine. But I obviously did not use enough flour because they stuck and deflated and I had to bin them (they also proceeded to rise over the top of the bin and down the side of the bin insert, it was all highly amusing to Carl).

 Not to be out-done, I tried again on Wednesday and I rose them on parchment paper and left them on there before slashing and baking. You can see I am no pro at the slashing part.

 Below is the finished bread. It was really tasty and the crunch was fab, I put some water to steam at the bottom of the oven. You can see I also made rolls but the hubbie ate the rest before I could photograph them.

I have seen some other Daring Bakers French bread that looks so much more amazing than mine so do go visit the Daring Bakers Blogroll.