Skills

A few years ago, NASA crashed a Mars probe into the surface of the red planet when they got their units mixed up. One group was using metric, and the other was using Freedom Units.

I would have laughed if it hadn’t been such an expensive mistake, both in terms of money and lost opportunity.

I’m a firm believer in Freedom Units. It is what I use regularly. My last big learning curve was going from 1/2 inch, 1/4 inch, 1/8 inch to 0.500, 0.250, 0.125, and 0.062, as in thousandths of an inch.

This small-scale metric stuff is for the birds.

Whenever I start to get a bit confused, I go 25.4 mm == 1 in. That’s close enough to 1/32 of an inch that I can use it for a working number.

The other number I use is 6 mm, which is around 1/4 inch. These are just to get some sort of feel for the numbers.

I just printed my second book for crimpers and terminals. It is 5 x 3 units and 6U tall. I found a Gridfinity bin to hold the crimpers I purchased. All’s good.

Except the bin doesn’t fit the pair I purchased. Slightly different.

So I went back to learning how to do this.

To help with just this task, I purchased a cutting mat with grid lines and other fancies on it. Here is the first photo I took.

It is in its blow-molded holder. This should give me the ability to trace the factory’s cutout/shadow box.

Once this is imported into FreeCAD, you rotate it until the grid is aligned properly, then you “calibrate” the image.

Calibrating means drawing a line between two points with known distance. In this case I have a bunch of 1cm squares. To average out my error, I clicked on one intersection, then counted over 70 mm by 10 mm and clicked. The image scaled. It is now ready to be traced.

I used a B-spline curve, which worked well. I’m getting the hang of it again, it having been 20 years since I used b-splines of this style.

When done, I simply cut the curve from a rectangle, padded the result to 3 mm, and printed it. This allows me to test fit the tool to the shadow without wasting lots of plastic and time.

It didn’t fit. It was too small.

I need to do it over again. This time I’m omitting the blow mold and working directly from the tool. I’ll draw a close-fitting curve, then pad it in X and Y by a mm or so.

This will work better; can you see why?

Yep, one side of the cutting map is in Freedom Units and the other in metric. My first photo was on the Freedom Unit side because it is less crowded. When I was counting out 70 mm, I was really counting out 3.5 in. If I had input 3.5 in into the calibration, it would have been fine.

Leason learned.

I finished the first set of base plates for putting Gridfinity into the top desk drawer of the printer support platform.

It looks nice. It is a 15 inch by 14 7/8 inch drawer. The base plate printed in four sections. It could have been just put in the drawer and worked, but I put snaps on the edges.

Since then, I’ve been watching as things move from the desk next to the printer and into its own bin, often custom, in one of three Gridfinity drawers. The two custom printed drawers in the riser and the one desk drawer.

It is slower than I would like, but it keeps getting better. I think this is going to work.

The next base plate will be for the “Shelf of No Return”. This is the shelf where things from the dining table get cleared, never to be seen again.

The hope is that when we turn that into an organized space, there will be less inclination to just pile stuff there.

So one of the prepper groups I belong to on Facebook has been posting these. I thought I’d pass some along. I believe these are meant for law enforcement, hence the “pursuit” comment.

As a prepper, I would not be worried about some of the things LEOs would be concerned about. I look at this scenario and the only “weight” that I would bother to attempt pulling up a steep embankment is a living person. The vehicle and the dead can stay at the bottom of the ravine, if we’re in a SHTF event.

Pulleys make lifting things easier. There’s a system called a 4-in-1 that would work in this case, though we’d be doing a 3-in-1 as we only have 4 pulleys. Rather than spend 20 minutes typing it up, I’m going to share a video that shows you the details clearly.

I have been doing computer modeling of some sort since around 1989. I’m not great at it; my task was generally making software that real modelers would use.

The software I worked on was BRL-CAD. BRL-CAD is a true solid modeling system. It is based on Combinatorial Solid Geometry (CSG). That is to say, you create solids and then use Boolean logic to get the shape you want.

What this means, in practical terms, is that you represent a sphere with a vector and a scalar. The first is the point in 3 space where the center of the sphere is located, and the other is the radius of the sphere.

The way we viewed the geometry was wireframe for modeling and then ray tracing for 3D rendering.

And we did astonishing things with this software. The visuals were often not the point of the model; often it was analysis of the model. For example, we had code that could be used to analyze the penetration mechanics of one solid impacting another solid, a target.

When we needed to move to the modern graphics processors, we needed a method of converting our solid models into triangles. We used non-manifold geometry instead of the industry standard of winged edges, thanks to some cutting edge research out of Australia.

That’s just backstory; sorry for the interruption.

Here is a case I’m designing for a Banana Pi BPI-M2 board that is running my NTP service.

This doesn’t have any of the cutouts required for the ports, but it is a good generic case. I’ll be adding design parameters for putting in posts for the board and other needed options for the case.

The basic design is parameterized. Which is to say, I have a spreadsheet that has values for width, length, height, shell thickness, and clearances.

The wedges for the snap fit are also derived from those values. It looks good.

Until I started to do the math.

I know what an inch is. I even have a good idea of what a 1/16th of an inch is. And because I’ve been playing with it, I know that 0.062 inches is close to 1/16th of an inch.

I have a feel for all of that.

What is a millimeter, though?

Well, that turns out to be 0.039 inches. Closer to 1/32nd than to 1/16. That’s small.

0.5 mm is 0.0196 inches. This is even smaller. While I strive to hit my tolerances within a few thousandths, and when I’m dialing something in, I’ll always get to a thousandth or less, those are small numbers.

And here is where I started to realize that I was making design mistakes. I had set my shell thickness to 1.5 mm with a clearance of 0.5 mm.

I got the 0.5 mm clearance from several sources talking about 3D printing snap-together cases. When I set the lip to be half the shell thickness, I got a 0.75 mm wide lip. That looked great. Then I remembered the clearance requirements and added allowance for that.

This meant that my lip was only 0.25 mm thick, or 0.0098 inches. That’s not a feature; that’s a burr.

In addition, the nozzle I’ll be using is 0.4 mm in diameter. The smallest feature I can print will be 0.4 mm or larger. I would have to use a different nozzle to get that level of detail.

The image you see above had the shell thickness set to 3 mm. I still want to do the lip, I’ll do a few test prints to dial it in.

There is this place where the mathematically perfect collides with physics, which collides with engineering, which is firmly entrenched in the real world.

The real world always wins.

One of the most powerful things about FreeCAD is that it is a fully scriptable CAD modeling system. This means you can write python scripts to do things.

They call them macros.

Which means they have plugins that do remarkable things. Just wonderful things.

The one I recently started using is the Gridfinity addon. Click the add button, and it will give you a bin. You can click some parameters to get exactly the shape you want.

If all you want is a bin, this works perfectly.

I want to make custom shadow cutouts in bins for some of my tools.

What I can’t do is select the face of the Bin and make direct modifications to it.

More learning to do.

For now, it is getting easier to get things done the way I want to.

The very first thing you need to do when choosing a printer is know what you want to print.

I can’t stress this enough. Sure you can go buy a $2000 11×17 color laser printer. But are you going to print 11×17? Do you need full photographic quality prints?

If what you are doing is printing your tax forms, then a simple $200-$300 black & white printer will do just fine.

The same is true for 3D printers. What do you want to print?

For me there was the “true” driving want, which wasn’t enough to justify a printer. I wanted to be able to print foundry patterns.

With enough research I found that organizational capabilities was high on my list of to-dos that has never gotten done.

To that end I picked MultiBoard as the ultimate pegboard and Gridfinity as my “flat surface” organizer.

Given these three drivers, I could start to list what I required in a printer.

I have tried printing foundry patterns in the past. It didn’t work. Today it should work better.

Most, if not all, of the MultiBoard and Gridfinity can be printed in the cheapest, easiest filament, PLA.

PLA requires a build plate that will support 55°C and a nozzle that supports 220°C. This is every printer out there.

If you need something a bit stronger, PETG is the go-to today. It requires a 70°C build plate and a 230 °C nozzle. Still well within the reach of most 3D printers.

Everything else requires more series printers. ABS, ASA, PA, and PC all require an enclosure. Without an enclosure, your prints will fail. The print will warp, and you will have issues with bed adhesion.

If you need to print something that will be exposed to the elements or that needs to be stronger, you need to go with one of the stronger plastics.

Which leads to the next class of filaments, those with additives. Carbon fiber and glass fiber are two of the common additives.

These fibers will eat your equipment. It will wear your PTFE tubes, but worse, it will eat your extruder and nozzle. You need hardened steel extruder driver gears and nozzle. You just have to plan on replacing the PTFE tubes as they wear. This should already be on your to-do list.

Some new printers come with multiple hotends so you can switch filaments while printing, quickly and easily.

For me, all of this took me to an 3D printer in an enclosure with a series build volume. The build volume I was looking for was 250x250x250 mm.

Because I knew I was going to be printing some CF or GF filament, I knew I wanted to upgrade my hotend to hardened steel.

Finally, I wanted to be able to change the nozzle without messing with cables, wires, or complex procedures.

After doing some back-of-the-envelope research, I started looking for a low cost printer that met my needs.

The printer names that popped up were Elegoo, Flashforge, Creality, and Bambu Lab.

I had never heard of Elegoo or Flashforge, but I had heard of both Creality and Bambu Lab.

The printer I was looking into was a Creality printer, but the Bambu Lab kept showing up with positive reviews. Their P1S met my needs except for the hardened nozzle, but that was an “easy” upgrade. The thing that was blocking me from pulling the trigger was that replacing the nozzle required changing out electronics. Something I did not want.

And then I stumbled on Bambu Lab P2S. This was released in late 2025. The reviews were all positive, but more than that, the reviewers were surprised at the types of improvements.

The P2S came with a hardened extruder and a hardened nozzle. They had also ditched the old hotend and gone with the hotend from one of their higher-end printers. They went with the H2D hotend.

This hotend has a quick replace system for the nozzle. You no longer need to replace electronics or mess with cables; you remove a silicon boot from the nozzle, release two spring clips with your fingers, remove the old nozzle, put the new nozzle in, close the clips, put the boot back on, tell the printer what nozzle you have installed.

I’ve done this twice. The first time took about 5 minutes, the second time about 30 seconds.

This left the ecosystem.

Bambu Lab is a closed ecosystem. They recently updated all their printers. With this update, 3rd party software tools lost the ability to control the printer. You could still move files to and from the printer, but you couldn’t initiate a print.

I had also read that Bambu Lab was using AI to evaluate the things being printed and would refuse to print some models from the cloud.

You could move the files by USB drive, but that gets painful.

They did have a LAN-only mode. That is what I am currently using. In LAN only mode you get full control of your printer. Your printer no longer talks to the Cloud. Your printer is yours.

It also turns out that the OrcaSlicer, which is a fork of the Bambu Studio slicer just works in LAN-only mode.

In addition, the price for the printer and the Automatic Material System (AMS) was less that the Creality printer I was looking for.

Conclusions

Am I happy with my purchase? Yes.

Is there anything I regret? Yes, I didn’t get enough filament out of the gate. I’ve gone through about 10 pounds of filament so far, and I’m not slowing down.

I don’t like finding out that I need a seperate dryer. And the amount of effort it takes to get dry filament.

I don’t like that I can’t directly move files from the Bambu Cloud to my printer; I have to move it through OrcaSlicer.

Would I do it again? Yes. Would I get a different printer? No.

My printer has been printing nearly non-stop since I got it. There were a couple of days when it was busy drying filament and not printing.

They offer the A1 combo at $399. That is the A1 and the AMS light. The AMS light handles four spools and you can have upto four AMS connected to your printer.

They also have the A1-Mini which comes in at $219 but only has a 180x180x180 build volume.

Please remember that I’m a Unix/Linux geek with to much experience in too many fields. What works for me might not work for you. Do your own research, but remember the first rule, have a reason you are going to spend some money. If you aren’t sure, look for a used A1 or A1-Mini or the most popular 3D printer, the Creality Ender 3.

I went with a Bambu Lab P2S printer. It is an enclosed printer; it has excellent support and ecosystem. And it has strong vertical integration.

In order to 3D print something, you need the printer, a build plate, filament, a model, and a slicer.

The build plate is a surface that the filament will adhere to when you want it to and release your printed part when you want it to release.

Filament is a thermoset plastic. I.e., a plastic that melts when heated and can be reshaped and then will hold that new shape after it cools.

The model is a digital 3D solid. It is normally generated with a CAD package.

The slicer take the 3D solid and slices it into layers, then creates a sequence of g-code instructions to recreate that solid in plastic.

The First Print

To start with, I purchased filament from Bambu Lab to use on my printer. Their filament spools come with RFID tags. When you put the spool in the AMS, it will read the RFID, which tells the AMS what type of filament it is and what color. It also says it is Bambu Lab filament, but nobody else has permission (cryptographic) to create RFID tags that the printer/AMS will read.

I selected a useful “print” from the prints that are preloaded in the printer. Then I pressed “go”.
It printed exactly what I wanted, and it has been in use ever since.

The Second Print

It is nice to have models preloaded to print, but that would get boring rapidly. The next step was to use their phone app to print something.

This consisted of starting their app, pointing my phone camera at a QR code on a box. That QR took me to a model in the Bambu Lab cloud. I clicked the print button and a short time later I had a 3D version of that print.

There were more things I printed this way, but it was time to move up.

The slicer

The approved software is Bambu Studio. Which is an Apple or Windows program, no Linux version. I choose to go with OrcaSlicer because it is well respected and integrates nicely with Bambu Lab printers.

Using the slicer, I was able to download models from other sites, outside of the Bambu Lab cloud, slice them, and then send them to the printer. I could then use the Bambu App to start the print, or print directly from the printer control panel.

Over time, I’ve moved away from the Bambu Lab Cloud. I’m doing everything locally now. I still use their cloud to find models ready to print, but that is only because it is easy. I can use their phone app, search for a model, tag it, then download and print it later.

ReMix

My first major print was a riser for the AMS. This was printed in four large parts and a set of TPU gaskets. Yes, I can print custom gaskets.

The riser holds two drawers. I printed those drawers with a Gridfinity base.

All is good so far. I then print a deburring tool Gridfinity bin. It should fit perfectly. It does, except it is too tall. I can’t close the drawer.

This lead to me doing my first remix. I pulled the STL into FreeCAD, then created a sold cube the right size. Intersected the two solids and ended up with a shortened version.

This worked. My deburring tool now fits perfectly in my Gridfinity drawer.

This type of remix is simple. More complex remixes take more time. I’m not good at it yet because it requires me to create a solid from an STL or STEP file.

My First Model

I wanted a Gridfinity box to hold my ultra-precision torque screwdriver. I did all the right things, except I did a shit job of my B-splines. I also took a bad picture. I was too close, so lines that should have been straight were not.

Regardless, I printed it. What came out fit the Gridfinity base. The bin was short enough that the drawer would close.

The issue? The finger holes to lift the tool out were way too small. I’ve learned that I need between 20 mm and 30 mm to bake it easy to grip.

I have a second attempt ready to go, but I haven’t printed it yet. It was cool to see. It is a disappointment for it to not work.

My Latest Model

To control the path of filament, 3D printers use lots of PTFE tubing. This is 4 mm OD and about 2 mm ID pneumatic tubing. These fit into PTFE couplers. One of the coupler/connectors I’m using is a PC4-M10. This has a push connector on one side and is threaded M10 on the other.

I’m using a printed replacement cap for a cereal container. A 4L cereal container will hold a 1 KG spool on rollers with space for a hygrometer and desiccant. With a hole in the container, you can feed your filament out and directly to your printer without ever exposing your filament to the moisture in the air.

One method is to drill a 10 mm hole in the side of the container and use a PC4-M10 screwed into the side. A better method is to put a M10 flanged nut on the backside.

I would rather not drill holes, so I went with the replacement cap with a socket for the PC4-M10.

The model prints the cap, a sealing plug, a threaded and knurled screw-on cap. The cap proper has an inset threaded boss for the knurled cap to screw onto to seal the container.

That boss holds a PC4-M10. The model also contains a printed nut for the PC5-M10. Now here is my issue: the person that printed this seems to have found PC4-M10 with M10x1.5 threads. The PC4-M10 I have is measured with M10x1.0 threads.

I went into FreeCAD, I created a solid with a flange, 17mm hex nut, and a proper M10x1.0 threaded hole.

And it worked. Those nuts are now in use.

I am that much closer to being able to print my patterns for castings.

It has been a learning week for me. I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m printing things for me rather than for the printer and the printing process.

Every part of the process is so much better than it was the last time I was attempting 3D prints. I have one confirmed model that is a failure. I’ll work with the least failed print to get the tool I need.

The two biggest issues in 3D printing today are bed adhesion and bad filament. Now bad filament isn’t always bad, sometimes it is just that it has absorbed too much water from the air.

There is a relatively simple fix for that: dry your filament.

My printer came with an AMS (automatic material system). It consists of a chamber that holds four spools of filament; each spool has its extruder/feeder. The printer controls the AMS. When the printer wants a particular filament, it unloads the current filament, then it tells the feed motor to push the filament down a sequence of PTFE tubes and Y connectors until the filament is at the extruder proper.

The printer then pushes out the old plastic from the hot end with the new filament, leaving the nozzle loaded with the new filament. It is cool to watch.

The AMS is designed for four small packages of silica desiccant. One of the first things I printed was a set of boxes to hold more desiccant. The AMS now has about between 10 and 20 times as much desiccant as it started with.

The AMS is sealed, has circulating fans and a heater. This means it can be used to dry filament as well as feed it.

There is one small issue: you can’t print while it is drying. You have to have a separate power supply for the AMS to dry while printing.

Which takes me to my “quick” fix, a SunLu S1 Plus filament dryer. This holds one spool of filament, it can run at up to 55°C, and it does a good job of PLA, PETG, and one or two other filaments.

Using it I have been able to rescue some 10 year old PLA that was stored open. It has all just printed, after it was dryed.

Now the fix to this temperature issue is to use a “blast oven”. A blast oven means an oven that can maintain a constant temperature for an extended period of time while air is forced around the filament.

I don’t have a blast oven. What I do have is a printer that can maintain a constant temperature but doesn’t have a fan.

The manufacturer recommends printing a cover in Polycarbonate (PC). But PC is extremely hygroscopic. Straight from the package, it has to be dried at 90°C. Which my SunLU can’t do.

If I had a PC drying cover, I could dry the PC in the printer. All I need is some dry PC but what I have is wet PC.

And this issue exists for every filament I have. So I’m doing a bootstrap.

I did a printer bed drying of some ASA. This took around 12 hours. I used a cardboard box, as recommended. To make a fake cover.

With the ASA dry enough to print, I’m printing a blast oven. This is a two part filament dryer that uses the printer bed for the heat source and a carefully designed drying chamber with forced air.

Now all I have to do is hope that part two prints successfully tonight.

One of my FB prepper groups posted this a week or so ago, and I’ve been watching what people talk about. Lots of stuff about toilet paper. Medications. Food, of course. Pretty much everything mentioned was STUFF, though. And I don’t think that the top 3 “unobvious” things are … well, things.

My first thing that I think people haven’t bothered to think about is garbage. By garbage, I mean both waste from our homes (food packages, moldy leftovers, clothing beyond repair, etc.) and waste from we humans. I don’t think most people give a second thought to garbage. Either they’re like me, and they’re used to taking their garbage to the dump, or they’re like my neighbor, and the magic truck just arrives once a week and takes it all away. In a real SHTF scenario, neither of those things are going to happen.

If the SHTF, you won’t get me within a mile of the public dump. Either everything there will be hella unsanitary (because public dumps require attendants to keep them clean and tidy, and a lot of the recyclables and such are removed each day, as is much of the actual garbage. If the social contract dissolves, there will be no attendants, and nowhere for the garbage to go. It’ll become rat infested, and frankly, human infested.

Human waste is an issue I don’t think the average citizen thinks over long about. I think about it all the time. What do you do with your piss and shit? I like that I flush and it goes away. That’s nice. But I also spend quite a bit of time every summer in places where that’s not the case, and I have to be careful. Port-a-potties are okay, but they fill up (quickly, more quickly than you think they will), and are not a long term solution. Trust me when I say, if the SHTF you want to turn off your toilet and block your access to the street once you’ve assured yourself it’s truly SHTF. You do not want that stuff backing up into your bathroom. Toilets can continue to be used until sewage overflows its bounds at whatever downhill facility it’s going to, at which point it’ll start coming up the tube to meet you.

What DO we do with human waste then? I’m a firm proponent of the “lovey loo” as one company decided to call it. The composting toilet, which need not be expensive or complex if building codes are no longer an issue, is the perfect answer to human waste. If you have even an acre of land, you can put it to use. There’s an fantastic book called The Humanure Handbook that explains the whole process, what to do with waste, and what not to do.

Basically, #1 should go into a bucket with a tight sealing lid, and when full, disposed of either in a hole that goes deeper than 10 inches, or poured out over an area that is not near any running water. Digging a hole is the best way to deal with it, and if you’re ONLY using it for urine, you can dig it and leave it dug, with just a cover over it to avoid anyone falling in. The urine will work its way through the soil and return to the water table safely. Remember that, for the most part, pee is sterile. You want to keep it separate from solid waste.

#2 can be collected in a homer bucket (lined with a garbage bag if you’re squeamish) with a layer of fresh wood shavings over each (ahem) movement. If you’re diligent about keeping urine separate and using your wood shavings, there usually isn’t any smell. You keep using the bucket until it’s full, and then you add in a handful of worm casings and bang the lid on tightly. Carefully label the exterior of the bucket ALL OVER, and set it neatly in the brush at the back of your property. After one year, it’s probably soil that’s fine to use. After two years, even the most delicate of scientists will tell you that all that’s left is dirt. Go use it in your garden. It’s compost, and it’ll be very rich. You work it right and you’ll have enough compost to keep your garden going basically forever.

Please note, all of the above is very short-handed. Go read the book. They explain everything in great detail. I have only given you the highlights here.

The second thing that I don’t think people are the least bit prepared for is the general idea that, if you have a disease or health issue, you’re going to die a lot faster than everyone else. If the SHTF, even if you have stored medication, it’s limited. When it runs out, your risk of dying skyrockets. Now if you’re lucky and the problem is Type II Diabetes, you might manage to work yourself into a safe zone and survive. Working your ass off will do that. But if the problem is cancer or Type I Diabetes, or PCOS or any number of other diseases, you have to be prepared to die. I hate to say it, and it’s uncomfortable to think about, but it’s the truth. It’s important to come to terms with the idea that you or others could die of stuff that was “easy to fix/control” just months earlier.

I deal with this stuff all the time, because I talk to people at historical events. They always ask, “Well, what would have happened to my dad in the 15th century, what with his diabetes?” Well, hon, he’d die. People with gluten intolerance or dairy intolerance? Dead. Allergic to bees? Dead (though not quite as easily as some other deaths). Allergic to a food that’s needed for survival (bread, peanut butter, cheese)? Dead. Have asthma? Dead. It’s a shitty reality that people need to be aware of long before the SHTF. It’s important to ask yourself NOW… am I more help to my family if I stockpile meds and try to make it through the worst days of the SHTF, or would my death be more useful (in which case, don’t store meds and accept what’s coming much more quickly)?

And number three, simply the amount of work people will need to do in order to survive. I do not for a minute believe that most people in our country today will survive the process of making soap to clean their clothes, or the sheer amount of work it takes to make a hot bath, or clearing a driveway without a snow blower. I’ve got a SMALL taste of it, when I spend my 7 to 10 days up at the fort. I only have to cart my water a few yards instead of up from the river, and I have modern soap to clean my clothing with, but I do my best to live like they did. It’s a lot of work. I don’t have time to look at my phone, or read a book. If I have time during daylight hours, I use it to mend clothing or do something else that requires light. On an average stay at the Fort, I walk between 11 and 17 miles a day, and that’s just when I’m staying IN the fort and not going for walks or wandering down to the river. That’s 15 or so miles walking from table to hearth to wood pile, in a big circle, a bazillion times. And that’s me acting as a woman, with a lot of work but a lot LESS walking than my menfolk will be doing.

What are three things you think people are unprepared for? Not the obvious stuff. No toilet paper. What situations or things or thoughts have you contemplated, that you don’t believe others have put thought into?

I’m not as much into white bread as some people are, but once in a while it’s nice to have that soft, spongy white stuff. Grilled cheese, for instance, is fantastic in a good white bread. And French Bread is the ultimate white loaf. It’s also ridiculously easy to make, which I appreciate so very much. This is the recipe that I use, and it turns out some freakin’ awesome loaves (pics at the end of the post)!

Ingredients:

• 2 ¼ cups warm water, 110-115 degrees F
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon instant or active dry yeast (see note)
• 2 ¼ teaspoons salt (see note)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil, canola oil, vegetable oil or avocado oil
• 5 ½ – 6 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour (see note)

You can make this in a stand mixer or by hand. It’s not a difficult dough to make even entirely by hand. I’m including directions for both methods.

Start by combining the water, sugar, and yeast. Let the mixture bubble and foam before moving on to the next step (this can take up to ten minutes if it’s really cold or your yeast is old, though usually you can see bubbles within a minute). Instant yeast doesn’t require you to activate it, but I find it’s always good to do this. If no bubbles happen, you know that your yeast is dead BEFORE you start investing time and flour into it.

Once the bubbles start, add in the salt, oil, and 3 cups of the flour, and mix. This can be done in a stand mixer with the dough hook on it, or with a wooden spoon in a large bowl. Continue to mix until the dough becomes a bit soupy, then slowly add in 2.5 to 3 cups more flour. I usually do this about a quarter to a half cup at a time so I don’t overload the dough with too much flour. When the dough is too “formed” to use the spoon anymore, when working by hand, turn it out onto the counter and begin the kneading process. In the stand mixer, continue adding flour until the dough clears off the sides of the bowl and makes a soft ball that might begin crawling up the dough hook. Turn it out on the counter and work the rest of this by hand.

French bread is a soft, sloppy dough in my opinion. You want to knead the dough for a few minutes, but not the 20 minutes a regular hearty bread requires. If it gets too tacky and starts to stick to your hands, add a couple of tablespoons of flour and knead that in. The goal is a ball of dough that is slightly tacky, very smooth, and soft enough that it starts to slump a little bit when left on the counter.

Put the dough into a bowl (I just use the mixing bowl I was using earlier) lightly coated with olive oil, and turn the dough to coat it LIGHTLY. Cover the bowl with a grocery bag or some plastic wrap, or cover it with a warm, moist towel. Set the bowl in a warm, relatively moist place. If you have a proofing box, use that. If you have nothing else, you can use your microwave to heat up 2 cups of water to almost boiling, then put the dough bowl in there WITH the hot water, and close the door. It’s usually a tight fit, but most modern microwaves will manage it. It becomes your proofing box.

Normally I would suggest several methods for rising bread dough, but French bread is a little finicky. It likes it very warm and moist. You want 85*F and almost steamy. My usual tricks won’t work (in a box with a heating mat, or in the oven with the light on but nothing else).

Let the dough rise for about an hour, until it’s doubled in size. If it isn’t doubled, wait longer. I sometimes snap a quick pic of my dough, so I can judge the size more accurately when I go back to check.

Once the dough is risen, turn it out onto your counter and cut it in half. Using the heel of your hand, pat each half out into a thick rectangle, about 9″ x 13″, though it doesn’t have to be exact. I usually put my baking sheet out where I can use it to judge size, and aim for a loaf about the length of the sheet. As you’re patting out the dough (NOT rolling it), use your palm to press out any air bubbles you find. Roll the dough up the long way (you want it 13″ long, not 9″ long), and then pinch the seam closed. I usually tuck the ends in as well, but that’s me. Just make sure they’re even and as sealed closed as possible. Place each of your French loaves onto a bit of parchment paper, onto a baking sheet. Some people use two different baking sheets, but I just pull up the parchment paper between the bread so it doesn’t accidentally grow into its neighbor.

Using a bread lame, razor blade, or VERY sharp knife, cut several gashes at an angle over the top of each loaf. While you can score the bread after it rises, that will sometimes deflate it. Doing it now ensures a nice, even rise that you don’t disturb. Spray some plastic wrap with no-stick spray, and cover each of the loaves gently, leaving a little room for growth. Try to avoid sealing it down, as you want it to have room to rise properly. Put the loaves back in your proofing box, or in the least drafty, warmest and moistest place, and allow them to rise again until they are about doubled in size. This will take another hour or so.

Preheat your oven to 375*F, and make sure your oven rack is centered. Put a small, heat-safe bowl in the bottom of your oven. Remove the plastic wrap from your dough, and slide it into your preheated oven. Toss 2 or 3 ice cubes into the small bowl that you put into the bottom of the oven. This gives you a nice, extra crisp crust! Bake the loaves for 25 to 30 minutes, checking ever 5 minutes after the 20 minute mark. You want golden, puffy loaves that sound hollow when knocked with your knuckles.

If you want a softer crust, slide a stick of butter over the top of the loaves the minute they come out of the oven. If you like it crispy, don’t butter it. Allow the loaves to cool entirely before cutting into them. Remember: bread continues baking for about 20 to 30 minutes after being removed from the oven, so cutting into it early will interfere with that.

Notes:

I use this bread for French Dip sandwiches. I use it for French toast. And most importantly, I use it to make garlic bread. It’s just generally yummy, though, whether you serve it as a sandwich or with soup or stew. Enjoy!