Daring Bakers: French Bread

So, I recently joined this monthly baking challenge website, The Daring Bakers. Did my first challenge last week, Julia Child's French Bread recipe. Gotta admit, I underestimated this one. Sure, the recipe was 15 pages long, but I've made bread before. No problem. Mostly, it was just time consuming. I didn't plan ahead very well, started it at one o'clock and was basically babysitting a ball of dough until midnight. Kneading it, letting it rise, shaping it, repeat, repeat. And after all that, I end up with these crazy misshapen blobs of loaves. Something happened moving it from the counter into the oven. Pretty gracelessly on my part. You can see in the pics how it looks beautiful until right before the end. Gotta admit, though, it tasted amazing. Best crust I've ever gotten on homemade bread, too. Looking forward to the next challenge, where I'll be a little more careful with everything.