You walk into a room and instantly smell it. Fresh bread! Sitting on the counter of your friend’s kitchen, right in front of you, are three freshly baked loaves of French Bread. You secretly wish you had the time to make bread like that…
But wait! You do! Just follow this simple recipe and you can have freshly baked French Bread in no time!
Ingredients:
2 TBSP Instant Yeast
2 ½ Cups Hot Water
3 TBSP Sugar
2 ½ Tsp Kosher Salt
⅓ Cup Olive Oil
6 ½ Cups White Bread Flour
1 Egg, beaten
Steps:
1. In a large wooden or plastic bowl, mix the water, sugar, salt, and oil with 3 cups of the bread flour. Then add yeast, continuing to mix, until smooth.
2. Slowly add the remaining 3 1/2 cups of bread flour until incorporated. The dough should be elastic but not sticky. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes.
3. Cut the dough into three equal balls. On a floured surface, roll out each ball out to the size of a baking sheet (roughly 9 x 12). Then roll up each dough sheet into a long loaf, tucking the ends downward.
4. Place each loaf on a baking mat or parchment paper. Use a sharp knife to cut small shallow slits on the top (no more than 1/2 inch deep). Brush each loaf with the beaten egg. Let rise for 45 minutes somewhere warm.
5. Preheat oven at 375 Fahrenheit and bake for 20 minutes or until desired colour is achieved.
6. Let cool for 10-15 minutes before slicing.
So there you have it! Warm, fresh bread in two hours or less. And much like this bread, this blog post is warm, delicious filler.
Consider this my week off. I’ll be back next week. But please, enjoy the bread!
The CJBuzz 