French Bread a la Tinto

Preheat oven to 400 degrees; place a shallow pan of water on the bottom rack. Grease a French bread pan.

In a bowl, mix together:
3 c. unbleached white flour
1 envelope quick-rising yeast
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. salt

Add 2 1/4 c. warm water.

Beat well and add an additional 1 c. flour. Beat until dough is smooth and elastic. Mix in a fifth cup of flour to make a stiff dough. Measure the 6th cup and place half of it on a board. Turn out the dough into the flour. With floured hands, knead the bread, adding the rest of the 6th cup of flour - if needed add another 1/2 cup - until the dough no longer sticks and is smooth and satiny.

If you have the time, you can place the dough in a greased bowl and let it rise in a warm place. (If you have used regular yeast, then you must do this step, and let the bread rise for about an hour and a half.) Or you can immediately shape into loaves and place in the greased pans. Shape by pressing into an oval, flattening the dough to get out the air bubbles and then bring the edges together to form the slightly rounded loaves.

Cover with a cloth and let rise anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

Using your fingers, slightly brush the loaves with cold water--just make the outsides slick. Place in oven and bake about 45 minutes. You can rotate the loaves out of their pans so that they brown on all sides, but beware of doing this too early or the loaves will collapse.

Variations: use 2-3 c. whole wheat flour (start and end with white) and use brown sugar or honey. With whole wheat or rye, the loaves will not rise as high, nor as fast. Light rye is 1 c. of rye to 5 c. white flour.