French Loaves

By Addie

My kids love to help me make this delicious bread recipe. It's quite easy and they love that they can be eating fresh bread in less than two hours! —Denise Boutin, Grand Isle, Vermont

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 2 cups warm water (110° to 115°)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 4 1/2-5 cups bread flour
• 1 teaspoon cornmeal

Preparation

Step 1

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the salt, sugar and 2 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.

Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide in half. Shape into 12-in.-long loaves.

Place seam side down on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with cornmeal.

With a sharp knife, make four shallow slashes across the top of each loaf.

Bake at 450° for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Yield: 2 loaves (12 slices each).
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REVIEWS:

My first time making bread loaf from scratch and it came out Perfect!..Great tasting bread which we used to make delicious garlic bread this past weekend. Easy and Fool proof enough for a first timer...I would recommend this to anyone!

Nice taste but a little dense, even for French bread.

Have made this recipe several times!! I love how easy it is. Homemade bread that taste great!

Perfect every time!

It was so easy and quick to make. The texture was perfect!

I have made these french loaves a half a dozen times and they are WONDERFUL! Very easy and quick for homemade bread! Made it tonight ~ we had friends over for dinner and they all raved over it!

My husband loves bread with most of his dinners so I decided to try my hand at making it myself. This recipe is easy and delicious. I, too, ended up with very wide loaves the first time. Now I actually cut the dough into 1/4s and make 4 smaller loaves. They freeze really well. Have also tried to add various herbs and turns out yummy too! A real keeper for sure!

I make this in my bread machine, and the results are wonderful! This makes wonderful garlic bread for our Sunday pasta dinner!

Made w/o bread flour, still good. I will try bread flour next time,
though.

This bread was super easy and the results were amazing. So many possibilities for the bread. I sliced it, drizzled on some olive oil, rubbed garlic on it, and toasted it...ahhhh perfection. I am making french toast bake for dinner tomorrow night with the leftovers. Thank you for such a wonderful recipe.

This is the best french bread I have ever made. I have made several batches and it is a favorite in the family.

This was the very first time that I ever tried to make bread. It was very good. I'm getting ready to make more tomorrow for company. I learned a lot from my first batch...like don't try to use a whisk while mixing in the flour.

This was fine, but not spectacular. It seemed to have a pretty strong yeast taste, and my loaves when they rose got very wide, more like Italian bread than French.

I have made this recipe twice now and my kids and their friends have begged for more. Even made french rolls for BBQ beef sandwiches with it.

I made this tonight and it turned out great. It tasted good and was super easy. I did use all purpose flour instead of bread flour and it still turned out great. I will make this again and look forward to trying different varieties like adding garlic or italian seasonings. Good recipe!

Simple, easy and good. Tasted very good toasted in the next days!