Another post in my occasional series, “How to ________ without _________“

This is my go-to bread recipe these days when I need to make some bread quickly to serve with dinner.  It’s not artisan bread (as in it won’t have a crazy, crackling crust or anything) but it’s easy, quick, and pretty good.  It’s also a good bread to make if you’re just starting into bread making.  The dough is really forgiving so it’s a good recipe to learn on.

Seeded French Bread
from Simply in Season

4 C whole wheat flour
2 C white bread flour**
2 T active dry yeast
2 T sugar
1 tsp salt

Mix together in a large bowl.

2 1/2 C hot water (hot but not uncomfortable to the touch)
2 T olive oil

Add to the flour mixture and mix well.

First, it will look like this:

After you’ve mixed for awhile, it will look like this:

When you get to this point is when you’ll probably want to ditch the spoon and use your hands.

Knead the bread for until all the flour is incorporated and the dough feels smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes or so.  Add a little more flour if the dough is sticking too much.  A little stickiness is fine.  (There are lots of videos on YouTube about how to knead bread dough if you’ve never done it before.)

You want the dough to end up looking like this:

Grease a bowl and put the dough in, flipping it over to get both sides greased.  Cover with a damp cloth and let it rise until it has just about doubled in size (usually about 1-2 hours for me).  Press the dough down and then let it sit for about 20 more minutes.  Then split the dough into three parts and form each section into a loaf.  I usually use a rolling pin to roll my dough into a rectangle and then roll up the rectangle.

Sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal and put the loaves on it.  Cut a few diagonal lines in the loaf with a serrated knife (that would be a Double-D edge for us Cutco people).

Let the loaves rise until they’ve doubled again (usually just 30 minutes or so for me).

1 egg
2 tsp water
seeds:  sesame, poppy, or fennel

Mix the egg and water together.  Use a pastry brush to brush on top of the loaves.  Sprinkle the loaves with the seeds.

Sometimes I split the dough into four parts instead of three for slightly smaller loaves.

Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 20-30 minutes.  I like mine to be on the brown, crunchy side so I cook them a bit longer than the recipe says.

These pictures are actually from almost a year ago.  I made twelve loaves of this bread for Ellie’s baptism luncheon, which was about 8 loaves of bread too many.  I’m not exactly sure why I thought everyone would eat so much bread.  So we gave the bread away as party favors!

This bread freezes well.  I try to keep some in the freezer most of the time.  It makes dinner time during the week a breeze!  To defrost, I wrap the frozen loaf in foil and put it in a 375 oven for 20-30 minutes, until it’s heated through.

Delicious!

**When working with whole wheat flour, it’s really important to the texture of the bread to use white bread flour (as opposed to all-purpose flour).  If you plan on making whole wheat bread, it’s really worth it to have white bread flour in your baking supplies.  I used to be a skeptic about having multiple kinds of flour but my sister-in-law Meggan (and now experience) converted me!