There's a fine line between a small bread bowl and a really big roll. I made these bread bowls to accompany my husbands delicious beef stew. The bread bowls were a tiny bit too small, but very delicious with the stew. Garrett was the only one in the family who used it as a bowl for his stew. The rest of us sliced our bowls and ate them with butter, like an oversized roll. Either way, it was a wonderful meal on a cold March day.
I used the French bread recipe in my favorite bread book,
The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. The recipe calls for a pre-ferment step that adds to the flavor of the bread. It's not nearly as tangy as my sour dough, but still more complex than a single proofing. The flour is a 50/50 blend of all purpose flour and bread flour. I'm not sure why the recipe calls for this (I should read the introduction to the recipe again...) but it makes a nice dough that forms into rolls or baguettes pretty well.
