Crusty French Boules

Last Monday I made some awesome little french bread boules that were super easy to make and very delicious.  Tuesday they were delivered to the girls' school with some homemade pumpkin butter for the teachers to enjoy as a snack.  The recipe for the bread comes from Cooking Light.

The recipe calls for preparing a pate fermentee 48 hours ahead of time and refrigerating it for two days.  That is really the only difficult part of this recipe, remembering that you need to plan ahead to make it!

After the pate fermentee rests in the fridge for two days, it is then added to warm water and yeast, along with flour and salt.  That is all the ingredients folks.  After a first rise, the dough is divided into two balls and shaped into loaves for the 2nd rise.

These are ready to go into the oven.  These bake at high temperature.  For the first few minutes a pan of water is kept on the floor of the oven.

The finished product.  I probably should have pulled them out of the oven a few minutes sooner, but it still tasted great.  Crusty on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.  I definitely want to make this bread again!