French Peasant Bread is the perfect solution to fulfill all of your laziest baking fantasies. With hardly any prep time, minimal ingredients, no kneading, and delicious flavor, you just might make this bread as much as we do! We eat it with everything…soup, chicken dishes, pasta, beef, and even as sandwich bread. My kids LOVE it. And if you want to impress someone, give them some of this bread hot out of the oven. They will love you forever. Promise.
Just stir the ingredients together, let it rise, throw it on a pan sprinkled with cornmeal, let it rise again, brush it with some butter, and toss it in the oven! Easiest bread you will ever make.
French Peasant Bread
Ingredients:
- 1 package dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp)
- 2 cups warm water
- 1 T sugar
- 2 t salt
- 4 1/2 c flour
- corn meal
- melted butter (about 2-3 T)
Directions:
- Place yeast, water, sugar, and salt in warm bowl and stir until dissolved. Add flour and stir until blended. Do not knead.
- Cover and let rise one hour or until doubled in size.
- Remove dough from the bowl with floured hands (or awkwardly scoop out half the dough with a rubber spatula like I do, because the dough is really sticky and I don’t want to touch it!) and place in 2 rounds on a parchment-lined cookie sheet sprinkled with corn meal. Let rise an additional hour, or until doubled.
- Brush the top with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook an additional 15 minutes.
- Remove from oven and brush again with butter.
- Serve warm.
Notes:
- To make the dough ahead, follow directions up until the second rise. Instead of leaving it out to rise, cover and place in the fridge. It will rise some in the fridge, but it may still need up to an hour to rise before you bake it.
- You can easily halve or half again this recipe, depending on the size of your crowd.
And if you want a laugh, this is the previous picture that I posted in 2008 when I knew absolutely nothing about photography or blogging. 🙂
