French Bread

French Loaf

🥖 The French Loaf I Baked Myself (With a Little Help from Option 7)

Let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t just a French loaf. This is my French loaf. Baked by hand (and by "hand", I of course mean expertly supervised while my Panasonic SD-PN100KXC handled the grunt work), this golden-crusted beauty rolled out of my kitchen looking like it had just done a semester abroad in Bordeaux and come back smug about it.

Crispy on the outside, soft and airy on the inside—it’s basically the bread equivalent of wearing a tuxedo with fluffy slippers. Elegant, but comfy. A perfect balance of Gallic swagger and home-baked charm.

The magic button? Option 7—the French bread setting. This little beauty takes its sweet time, using a longer, cooler rise to develop that classic French crust and flavour. I simply measured my ingredients with the precision of a NASA engineer, popped them in the tin, hit the sacred 7, and stepped back like a Michelin-starred wizard.

The result? A loaf with a crunchy crust that crackles when you squeeze it, and a light, airy interior perfect for smearing with real butter, dunking in soup, or tearing apart with your bare hands like some sort of flour-dusted gladiator.

Dry Yeast - 3/4 teaspoon (0.9%)

Strong White Flour - 250g (97.2%)

Salt - 1 teaspoon (1.9%)

Water - 180 ml

Add all ingredients in order. Set breadmaker to menu #7 and wait. Takes 5 hours.

Pro Tips from The Nix Institute of Bread Wizardry™:

• Let the loaf cool fully before slicing. I know. It’s hard. It smells like heaven and you’ll want to hack at it like a savage, but trust me—let it rest and reward you.

• If you’re feeling extra, chuck it under the grill with garlic butter. You’re welcome.

• Pair with cheese, olives, or that smug feeling you get when people say, “Wait... you made this?!”

So there you have it. A French loaf, born not in Paris, but in ST17—with love, flour, and a reliable bread machine on Option 7.

💰 Total Ingredient Cost per Loaf:

£0.2175 (flour) + £0.06164 (yeast) + £0.01 (salt) + £0.001 (water) = £0.29

Yes, twenty-nine pence.

Twenty-nine British pennies for a hand-crafted, crusty, French-inspired marvel. That’s less than half the cost of a supermarket loaf, and about 100 times more satisfying. Add that to the blog and you’ve got a “Bake It Yourself and Beat the Cost of Living” hero moment.