Do you have flour, yeast, honey and salt? Then you can make the tastiest, crustiest bread that will have your family telling you they never want to eat store-bought bread ever again! And in how much time? 5 Minutes prep, 1 hour rise and 15 minutes bake time. That’s fresh bread in about an hour and a half with little fuss and very little clean-up!
Here we go!
This is important! Any yeast dough needs a warm, comfortable environment in order to activate. If you have a window open or your air conditioning so high that your kitchen feels like a freezer, then your bread will not rise. I usually bake bread in the morning before the kids get up and like it best when the sun is streaming through the window, warm and inviting.
Assemble your ingredients:
3 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (or one envelope of active dry yeast)
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon honey (any liquid honey will do)
lukewarm water
In a large metal or glass bowl, mix the flour and the salt together. Nothing crazy, I just use a spoon and stir a little, making sure the salt is through the dough. 10-15 seconds.
Make a little indentation in the middle of your flour – a “well” – so that you can add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Use warm water (I run mine from the tap as I can control the temperature, not tepid but warm) and mix the honey into the warm water. Pour the water/honey right into the middle of the dry ingredients and start mixing with a spoon and spatula until it starts to turn sticky, about half a minute.
On a clean, dry surface such as your counter top or a large cutting board, dust the surface liberally with flour and scrape the hunk of dough out of the bowl and onto this surface. Sprinkle some flour on top of the dough and start kneading the dough well. This is just like playing with playdough – keep turning the outside in and work the dough until it has a fine smooth consistency. Don’t panic at this part. The texture should be fairly the same throughout the dough and you shouldn’t have chunks of dried flour running throughout. Once it looks like you’ve kneaded it well for a good 3-4 minutes, shape it into a ball. I place this ball back into the same bowl I used to mix the dough in, cover it with plastic wrap and a set the timer for 5 minutes. Place it in a warm undisturbed area such as on top of your oven.
*Helpful Hint: I always turn my oven on to 350° F for about 5 minutes, then turn it off immediately once it has reached the temperature. I want the oven surface to feel some of that warmth. I always turn on the hood fan light for a bit of extra heat. Then the dough is resting in a warm environment. Every bit helps.*
In the meantime, brush a large baking sheet with a bit of vegetable oil. Olive oil burns too quickly. Or spray lightly with cooking spray.
Once the 5 minutes are up, turn your dough back onto your floured surface and try to evenly divide into 3 sections. They don’t need to be completely even, just roughly the same size. Now pretend you’re making a long snake with each of the portions, shaping them into skinny loaves. They don’t have to be perfect!
Place the long, skinny loaves on the greased baking sheet, spacing them evenly apart. I take a sharp knife and cut a few slashes across the tops the loaves spacing the cuts fairly evenly, but you don’t have to. This just looks nice. Cover with plastic wrap again and gently place a tea towel over top. I put the baking sheet back onto the warm stove where it was rising, set the timer for one hour and make sure that no one disturbs the loaves while they are rising. You don’t need to check on the loaves at all. They will rise undisturbed.
60 minutes are up!
A few minutes before the timer goes off, preheat your oven to 450° F. As soon as the oven is hot, remove the coverings off the loaves and brush very lightly with vegetable oil so the tops are just covered slightly. This will give the bread a nice golden crust! Pop the loaves into the oven on the middle rack and set the timer for 13 minutes. THIS WILL GO FAST NOW. Do not open the oven during this process, but keep the interior oven light on so you can see the process. I leave the bread in for 15 minutes as we like the crunch of a good crust. If your bread looks dark at 13 minutes, pull it out. I place the baking sheet with the hot loaves on another large wooden cutting board for about 5 minutes, then transfer the bread onto a cooling rack.
You can eat the bread while it’s warm, or wrap it up when it has completely cooled to have on another day.
This bread is also fantastic as a sandwich bread! Serve fresh as a beautiful breakfast bread with butter and jam. If you are serving with dinner, give yourself 2 hours to make the bread and to cool it so that it is still warm when you serve it. Nothing compares to fresh bread slathered with butter that melts on your bread and in your mouth!
Baker’s Secret: My husband and I had three kids within five years and I always think of that time period as, “Shhh! The baby is sleeping!” That is how I handle bread dough. No slamming doors or banging pots and pans around a dough that is supposed to rise. Leave it alone. Be gentle with it. It’s a growing thing. Treat it like a baby :-). Enjoy!
Lolita Bakes! 