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Easy French Bread Recipe

Ingredients

How to make it

  • 1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in the warm water, in a small bowl. Set aside.
  • 2. In a large bowl or stand mixer, combine hot water, milk, egg, sugar, salt and oil. Add 1 1/2 cups of flour to the mixture and mix well. Stir in yeast mixture.
  • 3. Add 1 – 1 1/2 cups more flour and mix until well blended. (At this point your dough will still be quite sticky). Leave it in the bowl and let rise for 1 hour, mixing a few strokes a couple of times during the hour.
  • 4. Dump it out on a floured cutting board. Dough should be loose, not stiff.
  • 5. Preheat oven to 400 F. (205 C.).
  • 6. Flour your hands and divide dough into 2 pieces. If you like really fresh bread and only want to bake one loaf at a time just wrap the second hunk of dough in cling wrap or foil and put it in the freezer for later use. Pat and push each piece into the desired shape; something like the above pic See Photo. or this.
  • 7. Put on a greased cookie sheet. If you like fancy, slash the top diagonally every couple of inches with a sharp knife. Brush with egg white, if you like (I don’t bother).
  • 8. Let loaves rise about 30 more minutes.
  • 9. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes. The loaves should be golden brown and sound hollow when tapped.
  • If you saved half the dough for future use, when you’re ready to bake it, bring it out of the freezer, let it get to room temp, shape it, let rise and bake it.
  • I often make small, individual Baguettes with this dough. Just shape to desired size, let rise and bake. These usually bake a little faster than big loaves so keep an eye out.
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    " It was excellent "
    HeideM ate it and said...
    It's not what I would call French Bread, but it is a very good bread. The inside was very moist and delicate and the crust wasn't very thick or hard. It was VERY sticky and hard to work with but I will do it again. My family loved it. I served some of it for dinner with Sicilian dipping oil. Glad I tried it.
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The Cook

elgourmand2 APia, Samoa

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