Undercooked French Bread in Bread machine
I'm going to base my initial diagnosis on this:


  I followed the recipe but my bread turned out looking under-cooked on top of the loaf and on the inside. I made the Italian Parmesan bread last weekend and had no problems with it. This time, the bread seemed to stay liquid after mixing for a lot longer than it did with the Italian Parmesan bread.


No bread machine cookbook is able to account 100% for variations in ingredients and environment.  For this reason, I always watch the bread machine during the mixing stage, to see if I need to add a little bit of water or a little bit of flour.  

It sounds like you needed a little bit less water (like 2 Tbs less) or a little bit more flour (like 2 Tbs more) in order for the dough to reach the perfect consistency.  You can tell you have the right balance because the dough pulls away from the sides of the bread chamber, and balls up for the mixer blade to push it around, but there isn't a bunch of leftover dry flour.  If you try this again, I would suggest lowering the amount of water in the recipe by 2 Tbs, and waiting to add that in until the mixing stage if you know you need it.  And if it's still goopy well into the mixing stage, add a couple Tbs of flour.  Be cautious here, though; French bread is supposed to be high-hydration, so it should be a bit sticky.