Crusty French Dinner Rolls

Four ingredients. That is all bread asks of you. Flour, water, yeast, salt. The rest is time and attention.

I learned this in France, where bread is not a side dish but a participant in the meal. A crusty roll torn open at the table, its crumb still warm, used to soak up the last of the vinaigrette or the juices from the roast. Bread like this does not need butter. It needs nothing but itself.

The secret is patience. These rolls ferment slowly in a cold refrigerator overnight, developing the depth and complexity that bread made in a few hours simply cannot achieve. You will smell the difference when you open the bowl in the morning. The dough will be alive with fermentation, dotted with bubbles, fragrant and slightly tangy.

Source the best flour you can find. Stone-ground from a mill you trust, if possible. Industrial flour is stripped of its germ and bran, bleached and bromated into something convenient and lifeless. Good flour has presence. It smells of wheat. It feels silky between your fingers. Start there, and the bread will follow.