French Bread Flop

   Ian and I were invited to dinner by his boss and wife at their home. They are fun people so we gladly accepted. I didn't want to come empty handed so I thought of bringing a bruschetta. Of course I would make the bread from scratch! Rarely can I bring myself to BUY bread from the store anymore. The French bread recipe in the Bread Bible required an overnight process I didn't have time for so I found a recipe online that I could do in less than 3 hours. How - you might ask - could one recipe require 2 days and the other, only 2 hours? The answer: The quick version is never the better version.
   I combined the simple ingredients of flour, yeast, salt and water. Seems simple enough? No. First of all, 6 cups of flour and 2 whole packages of yeast sounds disproportionate. But, I did it anyway. The dough was too dry from what I could tell as it kneaded in my Kitchen Aid mixer. I took it out and kneaded it by hand for about 10 minutes. In an oiled glass bowl, I covered the lump of dough with a kitchen towel and left it to rise for an hour. After it doubled in size, I punched it down and split the dough in half. It kind of "chunked apart" instead of stretching like elastic, as bread should. Right there, I knew it was too dry. As I rolled each chunk out to a rectangle, I kept my hands wet in an attempt to moisten the dough. After stretching it out, I rolled the rectangles length wise and tucked the ends in, placing the long loafs on the baking sheet, seam down. Also, I sprinkled the baking sheet with corn meal.
   I basted the tops with egg whites and with a sharp knife, made 4 slits in each loaf. I let them bake for about 20 minutes and then basted them again. The recipe said bake 40 minutes total. They were still pretty light in color so I gave them an extra 8 minutes. When I took them out of the oven, they were nice and hard on the outside. They LOOKED perfect, so I was excited. I cut an end piece only to find the center was really dense. Too dense for French Bread. It was like Playdough. I took a small piece to Ian and he wouldn't even eat it!
   I placed both loaves in a food storage bag - I don't know, thinking magic would happen overnight? This morning, the bread was exactly the same. Dense, heavy, bland and unappetizing. I was not serving this to Ian's boss and family who had graciously invited us over for a steak dinner!
   I threw it in the trash. But I am not discouraged! In the Bread Bible, the author talks about French bread and baguettes in several places and admits that it took her 25 attempts before she perfected French bread. I will try again. But today, it looks like I'll be stopping at Publix to grab a loaf for dinner.