Food Friday - Easy Peasant Bread

Our family loves bread.  As a matter of fact, we have some type of bread or roll at almost every dinner meal.  It is the one thing I know my kids will eat and my husband loves to have a roll or biscuit to eat along side his meal.  Sure, we love store bought crescents and biscuits but there is just something about homemade bread that just tastes so good!  I have a bread machine that I love and use it often but I also like good "oven" breads too.  When I ran across this recipe I knew I had to try it - it looked easy and the list of ingredients is short which is always nice too :-)

Easy Peasant Bread
adapted from Real Mom Kitchen

This is such an easy recipe!!  This is not a good recipe to try in the bread maker though . .. I tried it and it did not mix well at all.  The second time I made it, I did it "by hand" as the recipe shows and it turned out perfectly.  This not only is good with dinner but, if you like sandwiches (I personally am not a huge fan!) then I think it would make great sandwich bread too. 

1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
2 cups warm water
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
4 cups flour
Cornmeal
Melted Butter

Place yeast, water, sugar and salt in bowl and stir until dissolved.  Add flour and stir until well blended.  Do not knead.  Cover and let rise until dough doubles in size (about 1 hour).  Remove dough from bowl and place in 2 rounds on a greased cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal.  Let rise an additional hour.  Brush top of dough with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes.  Reduce oven temperature to 375 and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Serve Warm.

Just one tip - when putting the two rounds (blobs HA) on the cookie sheet, place them far enough apart that as they raise, they don't become one large round/blob :-)  I had to separate mine - they got too friendly!!