Daring Bakers - French Bread!

I am now officially a Daring Baker!  Go me!  And I am so happy to be one right now because this month's challenge was truly wonderful.  It was hosted by Mary (Breadchick!) of The Sour Dough and Sara of I Like to Cook, and they had us bake (daringly!) Julia Child's French Bread!

When I saw that this was to be my first challenge, I admit that I was freaking intimidated.  I had never made any kind of bread or baked anything with yeast before!  Oh my...  what to do?  But I was determined to conquer the bread, and I decided to get in on the chat that Breadchick was hosting where I could make my bread with the company and support of a few other Daring Bakers.  This proved to be a good idea when at around 7:30 in the morning I was frantically typing something like, "Oh no!!  I just realized my yeast is instant!!  Aaaahhhhh!!!"  to which the wonderful Breadchick responded with a big "Don't worry," which is exactly what I needed to hear in my panicky and half-asleep state.  

So I got my yeast working, my bread rising, and enjoyed my yeasty smelling apartment while chatting with the other bakers.  It was way fun, and a happy way to spend the day!  

Luckily, I had no other problems until it came time to unmold my batards after their third rise.  As you can tell from the picture above, one of my batards completely deflated in the unmolding stage.  But I learned from this and was more gentle when handling the other two.  I made three, but only two are pictured because my roommate and I ate a whole batard before I could take the pictures!  Ahhh we were too hungry.

Even though my bread wasn't perfect (and one batard was pretty flat), my roommate and I enjoyed it immensely.  Yeah... we pretty much ate it all in one night... 

And this is how we ate it, because it has always been my favorite way to eat French Bread.  We sliced the bread into thin slices, buttered them lightly, and toasted them in a pan.

Then I made some hot chocolate (with the chocolate you saw in the first picture that was posing with the bread), and we dipped the toasted bread in the chocolate.  We ate this for dinner on Sunday night, but it really makes an awesome breakfast, if you can wait until morning!

I am so glad that this was my first Daring Bakers challenge, because I think it really forced me to experience what the group is all about.  While there are many things I have never tried to bake before, bread has always been kind of the big thing that I just didn't do.  I don't really know why, but I've just never felt compelled to bake bread before.  This probably would have continued for a pretty long time had it not been for this challenge.  

So, Mary and Sara, thank you so much for this challenge; I can honestly say that I have grown as a baker because of it, and that's awesome!  Oh and even more thanks to Mary for hosting the chat on Sunday; it was so helpful and I had fun chat-baking!  =)

If you want to make this bread, check out the recipe here.  It's long, but definitely worth it!

Also, check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see what all those other bakers made!