French Bread Recipe – Easy to Make with Just 5 Ingredients
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It doesn’t have to be difficult to bake bread at home, and this French bread recipe is one of my “must have” recipes. I use it for making bread bowls for soup, such as Wisconsin Cheese Soup, French bread pizza, garlic bread, or accompanying soup, salad, or stew.
French bread, not surprisingly, is great for French toast. Because it has a sturdier crust, it holds up well even when soaked with egg batter – so you don’t end up with your bread falling apart before you get it to the pan.
If you prefer a crusty French bread recipe, make sure to use the salt water glaze. This gives the bread a chewy, crispy crust. If you would like a softer crust, you may skip the glaze. (I highly recommend using it.)
It’s great to sink your teeth into a slice of fresh bread, dripping with butter or olive oil, with just the right resistance on the crust. No mushy, “stick to the roof of your mouth” bread with this recipe.
Homemade French Bread Recipe – Tools and Ingredients
For grinding your own fresh flour, I recommend the Nutrimill Classic Grain Mill. It’s reasonably compact, easy to use, and doesn’t heat up the flour like some other mills.
To make the French bread dough, you can either use the dough cycle on your bread machine, mix in a heavy stand mixer with dough hook or Bosch Kitchen Machine, or mix by hand. I mix it as the flour is being added, and then once the flour is in, I mix/knead until it is smooth and elastic.
I use a stainless steel chopper/scraper for cutting and shaping dough. This bread is typically baked on a half sheet pan, which you either grease or line with reusable parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
A large grid cooling rack is good for bread and for keeping smaller items like cookies from falling through the rack.
My preferred French bread ingredients:
- SAF-INSTANT yeast
- Frontier sea salt
- King Arthur bread flour or other organic bread flour such as Heartland Mills
- Organic cane sugar
- Non-chlorinated water
A single recipe makes one loaf (this is a double batch of the French bread recipe in the photos, thus two loaves). The full printable recipe is below the photos, along with a video demo of the bread from start to finish.
Roll out the French bread dough jelly roll style.
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Place the French bread dough loaves on prepared pans and allow to rise until roughly double in size.
For a crusty French bread, brush the bread with a saltwater glaze just before baking.
Remove the French bread loaves from the oven and cool on a wire rack before serving.
Print Friendly French Bread Recipe
PrintEasy Homemade French Bread
Homemade crusty French bread recipe – This recipe is perfect for bread bowls, French bread pizza, garlic bread or accompanying soup or stew. Makes great French toast!
- Prep Time: 1 hour
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
- Yield: 1 loaf 1x
- Category: Bread
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: French
Ingredients
Dough:
- 1 1/4 cup warm water
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon bread machine yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 1/2 cups bread flour
Glaze:
- 2 tablespoon water
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Dissolve sugar, yeast and salt in warm water in a large bowl or mixer of choice. Add flour cup by cup, mixing after each addition. Knead/mix until the dough is smooth and elastic (or let the dough cycle do its thing). This should take around 8-10 minutes.
- Let dough rise about 20 minutes, punch down. Cover and let rise in a warm location until doubled in size.
- Dump dough onto lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough in a rectangle, just slightly shorter than the length of your baking sheet and about half as wide. Roll up jelly roll style. Place on lightly greased pan (or cover pan with reusable parchment paper), seam side down. Allow to rise until double in size.
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Score the top of each loaf with a sharp knife three times, about 1/3 of the way through the dough. Brush with glaze and bake until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. Cool on wire rack.
More Homemade Bread Recipes
Enjoy fresh bread? Bread baking doesn’t have to be complicated. My sons have been making bread since they were around 10 years old. If they can do it, you can do it!
My bread book features troubleshooting tips for the most common bread baking questions. There’s also tips for high altitude adjustments, freezing and storing bread (including par baked rolls). There are also recipes for leftover bread, and foods that go great with bread, like flavored butters.
Click here to learn more or get my book “Never Buy Bread Again” – NOW AVAILABLE in spiral bound print and ebook formats.
Don’t forget to check out:
- 14 Homemade Bread Recipes – Never Buy Bread Again” for an assortment of bread recipes, including gluten free options
- Troubleshooting Tips to Help You Bake the Perfect Loaf of Bread
- Is Commercial Bread Making You Sick?
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Originally posted in 2015, last updated in 2018.
Laurie, you don’t knead your (French) bread recipe?
We do knead as the flour is being added and once the flour is in to get the dough texture right. Let me make that clearer in the instructions.
This recipe worked very well for me, and using your mix of glaze , well, just will take your taste buds to a higher level. Thank you for always sharing your great, easy recipes with us out here in the digital world.
Thank you for your kind words, Rose.
Hi. I have both King Arthurs all purpose flour and wheat flour, which one would you recommended for this bread?
All purpose flour is normally wheat flour, unless you have gluten free all purpose flour. If it’s AP wheat flour, that will work. If the other wheat flour is bread flour, that may work a little better.
Can this be made into rolls?
Sure. Just cut the bake time a little.
Hi
First time i tried my bread was just amazing. However, i tried twice since then and dont know why my bread are coming out hard. my daughter even said she can kill someone with that stone. I dont what i am doing wrong. any help?? Thanks
It’s tough to say what’s going on without having more information, I’d suggest checking out the post “Troubleshooting Tips to Help You Bake the Perfect Loaf of Bread” to see if you spot any of the common problems.
Could this recipe work with Einkorn flour?
I haven’t tried it, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t.
Will King Arthur white whole wheat flour work for this recipe? In prev question I wanted to ask about whole wheat flour that you could recommend for this recipe? thank you
Galina
I think King Arthur would work very well. I’ve always been happy with their quality.
What bread flour do you recommend?
Thank you
I have several that I use, and sometimes I grind my own. My favorite “off the shelf” brand is King Arthur flour. I regularly buy organic Gold N white flour from Natural Mills through our bulk foods buying club. Any good quality bread flour will work just fine. I do personally try and stick with organic, since now sometimes conventional wheat is dried down with glyphosate at harvest to increase yields.
Well. I’ve been baking french bread for many years – first using the bread machine to make the dough, until it died; then, I started trying different recipes here and there from Martha Stewart to Bon Apetit to a few off the internet – ALL to no success. (They were not rising, made flat loaves, greasy loaves, had no structure and I KNEW it was not my yeast! I also knew it was not my all purpose flour – I had been using AP with the bread machine and that specific recipe that came with it and it always worked fine.) Today, hallelujah, I found your recipe for French Bread. It rose up perfectly beautiful and is baking right now – the house smells DIVINE. AND I used AP flour. Thank you for a PERFECT RECIPE, FINALLY!!! 😀
Yeah! So glad that it worked out well for you.
I made this last night & It was a complete hit!!! First time making bread & it came out beautiful & delicious!!! Thank you for the recipe & easy to follow instructions!
Just tried this recipe. I had my bread machine make the dough. I had never used bread flour before, only all purpose. This was AMAZING! The family polished off the loaf, still warm with butter. This recipe has gone into My Favorites!!
Excited to try your easy French Bread. Thanks for the photos as well.