Julia Child's French Bread- Daring Baker Challenge # 2

Julia Child! What can I say? She's an Icon to say the least, chef extraordinaire, the real deal, and the true Queen of food television! So it's no wonder why our Host's, Breadchick Mary, of The Sour Dough and Sara, over at I Like To Cook, wanted to make Julia's french bread our next Daring Baker challenge.

I have to admit when I first saw the recipe ( by the way, you can get it in detail over at Mary's site) I thought it was a bit overwhelming, I had to read it several times to take it all in. I kept pushing it aside, because as I said before, I have issue's with precise and exact measuring. ( believe me, ask my family!) But heck! We're Daring Bakers! Up for the challenge, good or bad we all learn something. Right?
That's one thing I always admired from Julia, she was never afraid of making mistakes, she would take it in stride and move on!

So now, on to my french bread baking experience!

The dough came together with no problem at all, I did it by hand.

I did however have other problems, I wanted to make batards, but they ended up turning into baguettes, the dough didn't fit into my pans, I rolled it out too long, so I ended up flipping my pans over and baking them on the actual bottom of the pan. It worked out well after all, but it was very hard to clean my pans for some reason.

I ended up making two plain loaves, and the other one I added sundried tomatoes with Kalamata olives.

I didn't change the recipe at all, I just stuck them in, so I hope I stayed in the recipe guidelines as the host's said we can top at least 1 loaf with any ingredient we wanted.

But I have to say, the plain loaf was our favorite anyway! The crust turned out crispy, crunchy, and chewy, just the way we like it, and the texture inside was the best!

Nothings better than a great loaf of bread, dipped into some very special extra virgin olive oil! Mmmm!!

As Julia would always say....Bon Appetit!