french baguettes

Fresh bread is an indespensable part of every meal in the Mediterranean. It is not used just to make sandwiches or bread pudding. If a meal is served without bread, it is as if a meal was served without meat... simply put, no meal is complete without bread. It is consumed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My favorite place to buy bread is about a twenty minute walk from my house and when I can, I buy several loaves at a time and freeze them. However, it seems that I am always running out of bread and it´s a nuisance to make a special trip 20 minutes away just for a loaf of bread. It´s not just the convenience of being self sufficient that attracted me to bread making, but also it´s something I´ve always wanted to learn how to do. I found a recipe on youtube that requires little labor, but several hours of resting time. It really is worth it. I´ve only made it once and still need to work out some kinks, but it´s definitely a good skill to learn and won´t be hard to perfect.
Some tips on accelerating your bread rising.... turn your oven on low and use your thermometer (yeast do not like temperatures about 48º C). Turn off your oven and place several containers of boiling water in the oven along with your dough to rise. The steam from the water and the warm oven are perfect for your dough.

For the perfect crispy crust on your bread, spritz your loaves with water from a spray bottle every five to ten minutes when baking, this gives the bread a blistered crunchy texture on the outside.