Whole Wheat French Bread

I definitely got off to a late start last night. I'm going to need to be more efficient by baking more on the weekends and spreading out the posts. Baking every day is a herculean effort.

The results of last night's efforts was a whole wheat French bread. I'm finally happy with the crumb inside of the bread. I'm still working on the crust. This time the dough was hand kneaded and I gave it a much longer proof. Unfortunately, during the proof both loaves expanded to the point that they were touching and I fear that in the process of separating them and shoveling them into the oven, the crust lost some of its surface tension. Aside from that, I included a pan of water on the lowest level of the oven to provide steam for the first 10 minutes. However, in the rush of things and in a desperate desire to get some sleep, I don't believe that I let the oven preheat long enough. It may have been 425 degrees but the stone should have been heated longer and the water should have been steamier before I added the dough.

Tonight is my last bread attempt for a while, as it is time to move on to other things. There is so much to cover! I'll be doing another french bread but will use the sponge method this time. More on that later.