Yes, it really is simple. Promise! (Oh, and no bread machine required)
Ingredients:
1 tsp. dry active yeast
2 ½ cups flour
1 ½ tsp salt
1 tsp. sugar
1 ½ cups warm water
Instructions:
In a stand-alone mixer (or large bowl), mix yeast, sugar, and warm water and let sit for about five minutes until it gets foamy. Then, stir in the salt. Using the dough hook on your mixer (or a thick wooden slotted spoon), slowly add the flour until it is mixed in with the yeast. The dough should be smooth and a bit sticky.
Sprinkle the dough with flour to keep it from sticking to the sides of the bowl. Then, take a clean, damp kitchen towel, cover the bowl, and let sit for 1 hour. After that, the dough should have doubled in size. If not, then let it sit a bit longer. Once it has doubled in size, take flour and scatter onto a large cutting board or flat surface. Gently take it from the bowl and place it on the floured surface.
You will gently kneed it here as you take the sides and fold them in. Do this a few times, then shape it into a puffy round ball shape.
Grab the mixing bowl again, sprinkle with flour, and set it back into the bowl; cover with a damp towel, and let it rise again for thirty more minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 450, and place your Dutch oven inside so it gets nice and hot. Once dough has risen a little more, remove the Dutch oven and place bread inside, sprinkle with flour, then place back into the preheated oven with the lid on for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and let bake for another 15 minutes.
Once you remove it, let it stand for about 15 minutes, then let every one of your senses just indulge in the glow of its golden brown hue, the sound of its flakey crust, and the heavenly smells it will waft into your kitchen. Oh my! Slatter it with some butter and dip it in your favorite soup. Autumn never tasted so good!
Well, there you go, seven recipes to try this fall! As you may have noticed, nearly every recipe has onion, garlic, and some sort of stock base. These are fall must-have soup essentials, so you might want to "stock up" on those now. Oh, and if you really want to make it easy on yourself, get squeezable garlic. If you've never used that, you'll thank me later- wink, wink! Happy soup sippin' weather, y'all!
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