(Sorry for the stock photo. I lost my originals when my pbase account got deleted, and wayback machine doesn’t have it either. I may still have it somewhere in my files, but I haven’t found it yet. I will replace the image if/when I find mine.)

E-mail me with questions at stefoodie at gmail dot com. I’m not a french bread expert by any means but I’ll be happy to share whatever I know.

There are many little tips and tricks for making french bread and sourdoughs successfully, and there is a wealth of information on the ‘net. I’ll do another post on Internet sources and books one of these days, but for now I’ll end this post with these two tips:

The most useful tip I learned last year was to oil my kneading board as opposed to flouring it. It helped me tremendously in keeping the dough nice and supple and not too dense. The danger with flouring the board is that you may be adding more flour than is necessary, and you’ll get a heavy loaf.

The one other thing that I find most important about working with bread is learning exactly what a well-kneaded bread feels like. Until you work with your hands and not a stand mixer you won’t really “get to know” the dough. I was forced to go back to hand-kneading after killing my KA. my DLX spoils me now but hand-kneading during the months when I didn’t have a mixer taught me a lot so that my mistakes are fewer now. There will still be mistakes, as bread-baking is an art and therefore subject to so many varying factors — you, the temperature, humidity, the quality of the water and the flour and the yeast, etc., but at least you’ll know when YOUR job is done and when it’s time to let nature take over.