1-Hour French Bread Recipe: Crusty Homemade Bread Is the Real Deal by Melissa Vickers

I’ve tried some “easy” bread recipes of late that promise little time and effort and perfect bread out of the oven. Some of them live up to their claims, more or less. Here’s an easy French bread recipe that really did take about an hour and the end result has a nice crust on the outside and a soft, delicious inside.

The only part of the bread recipe that didn’t work for me was using the dough hooks for my mom’s old stand mixer. When I tried that, the dough kept rising up into the base of the machine, so I did some hand kneading. It all worked out, and I eventually got my mixer cleaned up again!

Here was my ingredient list for this one-hour French bread recipe: granulated sugar, dry yeast, salt, butter, all-purpose flour and an egg for the egg wash. Easy enough, right?

Serve this crusty bread as a side dish with dinner or as a snack with butter, jam, cheese, honey or fruit preserves. You could also make garlic bread with it. Delicious! 

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Cuisine: French
Prep Time: 15 minutes plus 20 minutes rising time
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 55 minutes (ovens vary)
Servings: 20 (makes 2 loaves)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups warm water (about 105 to 115 degrees F)
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 4 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast or 1 1/2 packets rapid rise yeast
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 4 teaspoons butter, softened
• 3 1/2 - 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 egg white (egg wash)

Recipe Notes

• Don't let your water get too hot or it will kill the yeast.

• Store the bread in an airtight container.

Here’s how to make it:

1. Combine warm water, sugar, salt and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir until the yeast dissolves. If using regular yeast, wait a few minutes to make sure it starts forming bubbles. If using rapid rise yeast, go on to the next step.
2. Use the regular beater attachments to begin blending in the flour. Add the butter. When the dough gets too heavy for those, change to dough hooks. Add flour gradually until the dough begins to pull away and clean the sides of the bowl. (I let this go on until I realized I couldn’t control the dough and switched to a few minutes of hand kneading with extra flour until the dough was not sticky and could be handled easily.)
3. Grease a baking sheet or baguette pans and form loaves to fit. Slash the crust three to four times to prevent the crust from cracking. Cover loaves with a tea towel and let the dough rise for 20 minutes, or until about doubled in size.
4. Beat an egg white until it’s frothy and brush it generously over the entire surface of the loaves.
5. Bake in a preheated 450-degree F oven for about 20 minutes, or until the crust is a shiny, golden brown. Cool slightly before cutting.
   

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