Homemade Peasant Bread Easy Recipe

Take a large mixing bowl. In the bowl, add flour, sugar, salt, and instant yeast. Mix them well. Now add the lukewarm water and mix it well until a nice dough is formed. If you are using Active-Dry yeast, then dissolve sugar into the lukewarm water and sprinkle active-dry yeast over it. No need to mix it. Let it rest for 10 – 15 minutes. In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt and set aside. When the yeast-sugar water gets foamy, mix it well, and pour this yeast-sugar water into the flour. Mix well until the dough is formed. Now cover the bowl with a dishtowel or a plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place. Let the dough rest until it gets double in size. This will take at least one hour for the dough to rise completely. If you place the bowl in a cool place, the dough will take almost 2 hours to rise. Turn on the oven at a high temperature like 350ºF or so just for one minute and then turn it off. This is a simple trick to create a slightly warm environment for the peasant bread. Now preheat the baking oven to 425ºF. Take two small Pyrex bowls about 1-qt or 1.5-qt in size. Grease them well with unsalted butter. Punch down your dough and scrape it from the sides of the bowl with the help of two forks. Deflate the dough from the sides of the bowl and pull it towards the center to form a rough ball. Now divide the dough into two equal parts using forks from the center. Transfer each half of the dough into the butter-coated Pyrex bowls. If the dough is too wet and sticky to handle with forks, then grease your hands with oil and transfer the two halves into the baking bowls using your hands. Set the baking bowls aside on the countertop near the oven or any other warm place. Let the dough rise again for about 20 - 30 minutes. Remember not to cover the dough while leaving it to rise again. Remember, do not use the warm-oven trick for the second time. Just place the bowls near the oven or the top of it. Place the bread in the preheated oven at 425ºF and bake it for 15 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 375ºF and bake it for another 17-20 minutes. Now take the baking bowls out of the oven. Remove the bread loaves from the bowls and place them on the cooling rack. Bread loaves fall out on the cooling rack quickly if the baking bowls are well-greased with butter in the beginning. If the bread loaves are a bit soft and pale rather than golden-brown, then place the bread loaves directly into the baking oven (without baking bowls) and bake them again for 5 minutes. Baking the bread again will give it a beautiful golden crust. Take the bread loaves out of the oven and let them cool for 10 minutes before cutting.