French Bread Recipe

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New Orleans french bread?

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First, you get some brown water...

For exact replica NOLA french bread, you'll need a few tricks up your sleeve. The light but shattering crust is incredibly difficult to achieve in a home oven. Commercial ovens have steam injection; the loaves are baked with steam during the initial baking period; this allows the loaf to reach max oven spring before the crust "sets" and hardens. Hence the poofy/airy interior of a classic NOLA loaf. You can approximate this by putting a cast iron skillet on your oven floor during the preheat period, then pouring boiling water (carefully) into the pan to generate steam after you load the bread into the oven.

A classic French baguette recipe is made from a leaner (no fat or other enrichments) dough than NOLA french bread. Look at the ingredients listing on your favorite brand: most include at least some fat (soybean oil, lard, shortening) and some even include dough conditioners (yuky additives that allow the dough to be worked very quickly in an industrial setting).

NOLA french bread used to be better...I find that the ZIP/Reising loaf has become quite poor in the post-Katrina years. I prefer the older style of Binder's long loaf, or the bread from LeJeune's in Jeanerette.

Saveur has an online recipe that's a decent starting point, as does Richard Collin's New Orleans cookbook. With any bread, the recipe is a pale shadow of what you need to know to get a superior result. Practice & skill are necessary...simply shaping long, skinny loaves that rise & bake evenly/symmetrically is a thing requiring practice.