One Hour French Bread

This recipe quickly made 4 nice large loaves of French bread and the addition of the melted butter over the loaves the last 10 minutes of baking results in a deep mahogany crust.

This is a recipe I have seen several times and have placed on my stack of "to do" recipes and it is perfect for the Italian Beef we are serving for dinner tonight.  Again this is an Indiana blogger I am adapting from found through littleindiana.com.  Kelin at The Stay at Home Chef is another Indiana blogger.

Ingredients for One Hour French Bread Recipe:

3 C. Warm Water 115 degrees
3 T. Instant Yeast
6 T. Sugar
2 t. Salt
6 1/2 C. Bread Flour
1 C. melted butter

Add the yeast and sugar to the warm water in the base of a stand mixer.  Let stand 5 minutes.  Add the salt and mix.  Add the flour and mix just until the ingredients come together.  Change to a dough hook.  Knead for 5 minutes.

Divide the dough into 4 parts and roll each into a 8" x12" rectangle.  (Remember a bigger rectangle makes a skinnier baguette a smaller a thicker one.)  Cover two large baking sheets with parchment paper.  Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Roll up each rectangle and pinch the ends to give that baguette shape.  Place 2 loaves on each sheet.  Cover with a clean towel and let rise for 30 minutes.  

Now cut a 1" deep cranny along the length of each loaf of bread.  Bake for 9 minutes.  Rotate the baguettes and dump all of the butter equally on top of the loaves, drizzling it over the sides, every-which-way.  ( You can reduce the amount of butter by half with equally delicious results.)

Bake another 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve.

NOTE: I doubled the original recipe so you can easily cut it in half for 2 loaves.

Yields 4 loaves.