Frenchy Frencherson

So, in my extensive free time yesterday, I decided to make French Bread and then French Onion Soup (inspired by a friend). I had attempted the bread before and it did well in large loafs, but yesterday I wanted to make mini baguettes so I could freeze some to pull out on the fly.

The bread (Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook) was good, but the soup was great...which is hilarious to me as I have never tasted French Onion Soup before, needless to say ever made it. So I loosely followed Jessie/Joy of Cooking Recipe and the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook Recipe.

French Onion Soup
5 cups sweet onions thinly sliced (I used 3 huge ones)
1.5 cups water
2 Tbs Sherry
cook until water evaporates - then stir in

salt & pepper
3Tbs Smart Balance
1 Tbs Olive Oil
Saute until onions are a light brown color, on the verge of caramelization then add
8 cups chicken stock (I think traditional French Onion Soup has Beef Broth, but we didn't have any of that, so I just used our chicken stock)
1/4 cup Sherry
salt and pepper if needed

Bring to a boil and then let simmer from 40 min - 3 hours. The longer you wait to eat it, the more flavorful it will be, though it will reduce some (I let mine go 2 - 3 hours-ish and on my 6 qt deep saute pan, it went down about an inch from where it was when I first put the stock in)

French Bread
(adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook)
So, this takes a little while... all in all about 3 - 4 hours.

5 1/2 to 6 cups All-Purpose Flour
2 packages of active dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups warm water
Cornmeal or Semolina
1 egg white, slightly beaten with 1 tablespoon of water

In your mixing bowl put 2 cups of the flour, yeast, and salt - stir together. Then add your water and beat on low for 30 seconds, then beat on high for 3 minutes. If you knead in the mixer, add the dough hook, and knead until smooth and elastic. If you knead by hand, knead for about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. Form into a ball and place in a lightly greased bowl turning once to grease the dough surface, large enough for it to double in size.

Cover and let rise until doubled (about 1 hour or so.) If you want to speed up your rise, preheat the oven to 200 degrees for 5 to 10 minutes (just till it's warm), turn it off and place your dough in oven (still covered), this should cut down your rise time by at least half.
Once doubled, punch the dough down and turn out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Cut into two (loafs) or four (mini-baguettes) equal parts, cover and let rise for 10 minutes.


If making loaves, roll each dough half into a 15x10 inch rectangle. and tightly role up starting from the long side. Seal well and taper the edges if you'd like, pinching and puling at the ends slightly. Place dough seam side down on nonstick (or slightly greased) baking sheet that has been sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina. If making mini-loaves, role each dough half into a 8x12 inch rectangle and roll up tightly. (I rolled mine up on the short side for a mini-loaf, if you want a baguette role out 1/4 of dough to 14x 5 to 16x5 inch rectangle and roll starting from the long side.) brush with egg white and water mixture and let double in size (about 45 minutes). Then with a sharp razor blade, slice 3 to 4 1/4 inch deep diagonal cuts across the top of the loaf.

Bake for 20 minutes, take out and brush again with the egg white and water mixture and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes or until bread sounds hollow when you tap it. Immediately remove loaves from baking sheet and cool on wire racks.

To serve the French Onion Soup, we heavily toasted 1/2 inch slices of the bread, then rubbed with garlic and put Smart Balance on both sides and re-toasted, until a deep golden brown.
Put some soup in a bowl.

Put the toasted bread on top of the soup.

Turn broiler on and sprinkle Parmesan on top of bread.

Place slices/shavings of Gruyere Cheese on top, sprinkle with freshly crushed pepper and throw under the broiler until cheese is melted, but not brown. Watch it so it doesn't burn.

and Voila! French Onion Soup! (next time I'll just buy some bread, the fresh is nice and tastes great, but for this, I'm not sure it's worth it... and it sure would be a LOT faster to just make the soup and buy the bread)




So that is the story of a Frenchy Frencherson meal. Delicious, especially now that it's getting a bit cooler (lows int he 40's this week here in Madison).