Baking #2: 42 projects in 52 weeks- “Easy Peasy French Bread”

***This was originally posted on 1/5/15***

OK, so those of you who know me from school at some level or another will know that I like to front load my work whenever possible. I’d rather work really hard and get some extra time to rest and recover at the end of the week/month/semester/etc. than get stressed from the pressure of letting things build up. So unless things really fall apart, I try to be extra productive and positive on Mondays. I have a lot on my to-do list today, and this baking project didn’t derail that to do list at all! (though the painful teething times of my little guy did…)

When I first started thinking about this project/ New Year’s Resolution, I figured where better to get ideas of what to bake than good ol’ Pinterest?! I spent some time searching and I have about 20 recipes pinned or liked that I’m keeping my eye on and hope to try at some point. The recipe for this week’s loaf was on my list. It seems to be the darling of the Pinterest bread baking world and came up several times in my searches. Seriously, it was everywhere, you may recognize it by this image:

It wasn’t until a friend messaged me, however, that I decided I needed to bump it up the list and try it ASAP. This is what her message said: “Literally the easiest bread I’ve made and one of the easiest things I’ve ever baked. I make it at least once a week!”

Well, that recommendation was good enough for me. And she was right. It was SO EASY! It took a lot less time than the last bread batch (Only 15 minutes for it to rise?! That’s perfect timing for me to feed my son and start him on some independent playtime and get 30 minutes to myself while it bakes!) You can find the recipe for yourself here but I will post the ingredients to give you an idea of just how easy it is:

Ingredients:

• 1½ cups warm water
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• 1½ tablespoons Active Dry Yeast
• 3½ – 4½ cups flour 15

Here’s the end result:

The bread is very white compared to my first recipe, which combined white and wheat flour, and I missed a little bit of the texture of the first loaf. However, it is delicious and soft and was hard not to eat the whole thing before hubby got home (and he’s still not home yet so… no promises).

This is definitely going in the make again file. In fact, one of our favorite meals is french bread pizza with roasted vegetables, and I think this homemade loaf would be PERFECT for making that in the future! YUM.