Sally, Baking with Julia is one of my favourite cookbooks. I use her recipe for French bread and it is her recipe I use for Croissants and the Pain au Chocolate. I can highly recommmend both recipes. If you are really in the mood for baking you can't go wrong with the croissants. Make half croissants and half Pain au Chocolate. They freeze well too. I know that there are a few more recipes in that cookbook that I have made, but unfortunately, Moe already boxed up all my cookbooks so I'm without any cookbooks until after we get moved. Or until I have at least 80 feet of bookshelves built. LOL! Ann

The fecipe you posted could go in the refrigerator after the first kneading....but the interesting thing I am learning is that a rest in the refrigt akes the place of most of the kneading... Un baked dough keeps 5 to 6 days before it begins to go gray and funky.....but when it does....just add more flour and water and a bit of sugar and call it a starter or poolish or biga or whatever.....use some in your next batch of bread. Really unless it begins to mold or get really nasty sour, it's good for a long time! Linda C

Have been using a bread machine for several years. Flour, buying a bag or two when it's on special at just under $9.00 for 22 lbs. (10 kg), whole wheat costs some more and I usually use it for about a quarter of the mix: 4 cups makes about a 2 lb. loaf. I get a pound block of yeast for $5.00 and, at a teaspoon and a half per loaf, lasts forever .... well, more than a year, if deteriorating memory serves. Tablespoon of sugar and teaspoon of salt don't cost much. Recipe calls for 1.5 cups or slightly less of water; I use just under 1/4 cup 10% cream (often get on special at about $2.00 per just over a quart), a little under half a cup of 2% milk ($3.18 for 4 litres, 3.85 of which make a U.S. gal., on seniors' day at one store, I often manage to arrange that) and just under 3/4 cup of water ... which I haul in jugs from the city. Without having done careful cost checking, I've figured about 50 - 75 cents per loaf, and it's hard to get a 1.5 lb. loaf here for under about $2.25 - more likely up closer to $2.75 - 3.00. I don't figure that it takes a lot of power - my house, occasional use in the barn, and landlord's shop have been costing a couple of dollars or so either side of $100.00 per month usage in recent years. I've been having some rather bad turnouts lately, not rising enough - think maybe I'd better get another pkg. of yeast tomorrow to see whether that fixes the problem. I had not opened the last one for a while, and the rats dug a hole in the corner, so think that it started to deteriorate then, and it was some time before I began to use it. I think that there are some loaf pans around here, from step-aunt's days, so I may start to use them when I find them: I've used a pie-plate-shaped aluminum throw-away pan, but am not enthused about the resulting shape ... getting old and preferring uniformity of shape and size, slice to slice, maybe? This "Baker" hasn't been accused of being half-baked in some time: that's for when the power goes off, half way through, I guess. ole joyfuelled ... with a bit of help from a slice o' bread, whether home-made or not

Tried to post again and it still doesn't show up anywhere but in my own activity log so I copied it here. ---- I am going to post the recipe as I first started using it. For my taste, the bread was too sweet so in parentheses I will put what I use now. ---- 2 cups water - 110°-120° 3 Tablespoons sugar (1 slightly rounded Tablespoon) 1-1/2 Tablespoons Active Dry Yeast 1-1/2 teaspoons salt (slightly rounded) 1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil 6 cups flour* ---- Fit mixer with paddle. Put water and sugar in mixer bowl, stir to dissolve sugar. Sprinkle yeast over and let sit until foamy, 5- 15 minutes (I stir slightly to get the yeast into the sugar water.) I find that 5 minutes is generally sufficient. Add salt, oil and 3 cups of the flour. Mix very well. Change from paddle to dough hook, on low, add the other 3 cups of flour. Once most of the flour is incorporated, raise mixer speed to medium and mix until it becomes a cohesive whole, with no flour on sides of bowl. Turn out onto floured surface and knead 4-6 minutes, using the most minimum of flour possible, just enough to keep it from sticking to your hands. Place in a LARGE greased bowl, turn once to grease all sides of dough, then cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour. After 1 hour, punch dough down and form into 2 loaves. Place in greased loaf pans, cover and let rise until dough crowns to a little over 1" above pan tops. Preheat oven to 350° Bake loaves for 25 - 30 minutes, if browning too quickly, cover loosely with foil after 18 minutes. I let the loaves sit only for a minute or 2 in the pans then turn them onto a rack to cool. Let cool completely before cutting. ---- *OK so here's the thing about flour. The original recipe called for All Purpose flour. I only use bread flour and just because I got silly and ordered a bunch of durum flour and need to use it before it goes bad, I actually substitute 1/2 cup of it for 1/2 cup of the bread flour. I am not scientific enough to know if that actually does anything to make the bread soft but still able to hold together when cut or not. If anyone here knows please feel free to chime in. If it really does make some kind of difference I will replenish my supply once it's gone. If it really serves no particular purpose I will go back to all bread flour. I probably have enough durum for 7 or 8 more batches