The Easiest At Home Bread Baking Recipe You’ll Ever Use

May the best loaf of bread win.

I'm sure everyone has their favorite spots in town to grab a fancy loaf. My spots are normally Essencia Bakery

Viera's Bakery makes many loaves and they sell out quick

And I see that Burhmaster is back at Wrays in Yakima and Selah :)

The other day I was making a potato leek soup, shockingly delicious so a big shout-out goes to Pacific Northwest Fresh because it was a recipe from their produce boxes that my husband says is almost like potato chowder :) Anyone I wanted bread but didn't want to leave the house so I figured I would try once again to bake my own.

I have tried a bread maker, a few different recipes over the years and they have all failed but for some reason, the recipe below is the EASIEST and it came out great!

What you'll need:

One packet of instant yeast (2 teaspoons)

3 and 1/4 cups bread flour

2 teaspoons coarse salt

1 and 1/2 cups cool water

wooden spoon

parchment paper

a large bowl

Currently, I don't own a dutch oven so a pan and parchment paper worked fantastically. I will be honest, even my yeast was old so I used a trick where you put the yeast in a cup and pour half a cup of warm water in it if it rises to double the size within 10ish minutes your yeast is still good.

Take your large bowl and add your flour, the yeast, salt, and the rest of the water and mix together with the end of a wooden spoon. You want it wet, then cover it with saran wrap and place it on top of a warming oven or on the counter. It took about two hours to double in size.

Turn your oven on to 425 degrees and while it's preheating take a pot and boil water. When the oven is ready, take your pan, cover it with parchment paper and plop your dough in the middle. Grab yourself a pan to put on the lowest rack, fill it with your boiling water, and place your pan with the bread dough on the higher rack and bake for 35 minutes.

That's it.

Let it sit for 30 minutes and you an incredible crunch, that toasts well and keeps nicely in an airtight bag!

Side note I decided I wanted to get fancy, always dangerous when cooking something for the first time but it worked. I added rosemary and thyme, about two teaspoons of each, it gave it a really nice aftertaste that for sure had layers when eating it with the soup.

I would love to give credit to the person who created the original recipe but honestly, I can't find it anywhere so this is what I could remember.

Tonight I am going to make some regular white bread for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but if you have a few hours, this was so simple, not messy, and absolutely delicious.