In today’s post: This is the perfect easy bread recipe to make while you’re stuck at home. It only takes 4 ingredients and less than 10 minutes of hands on work.
Many of us are stuck at home right now, dealing with lots of uncertainty. There’s something about baking a beautiful loaf of bread that makes everything feel just a little bit better, at least for a while. But I’m finding that my attention span is a bit short these days, what with everything that’s going on. So I wanted to figure out how to bake the easiest loaf of bread possible.
My Easy Artisan Bread Recipe has been one of the most popular posts on my site for a couple of years now – and for good reason! It only takes 4 ingredients and a tiny amount of work and it turns out absolutely amazing. There’s only one thing that could make it easier: using a normal loaf pan instead of a circular dish with high sides (like an enameled dutch oven).
So that’s what I did this week! I figured out how to make this easy bread recipe even easier. All you need is flour, yeast, salt and water and you are ready to get started. There’s no need for a mixer because this recipe doesn’t even require kneading! I have a step by step video for you that shows everything you need to do in real time – and it’s under 8 minutes long.
Seriously, this loaf is easy enough that your kids and teens could make it for you!
All you do is stir together the four ingredients (flour, yeast, salt, water) and then allow them to rest + rise on your countertop for a nice long time – anywhere between 8 and 24 hours will work. This long rise builds the structure of the bread, which means we don’t have to do any kneading at all! It also allows a lot of really nice flavor to develop.
The end result is a chewy bread with large air holes that tastes absolutely amazing. Now, this isn’t your standard white sandwich bread that’s super duper soft – check out this recipe for a standard homemade white bread – but it does make an amazing sandwich. Although we hardly ever have enough left over for sandwiches since we tend to eat the entire loaf fresh out of the oven, spread with plenty of butter.
Easy Bread Recipe Video
The video below walks you through every single step needed to make this bread and gives lots of explanation. I show you every bit of hands on work in real time – and the video takes less than 8 minutes including my commentary! This bread does require a long rise – meaning you probably want to stir it up the night before you’d like to bake it – but the hands on time is only about 5 minutes. The recipe card is below the video.
(Note: if the video isn’t showing up below, that means you are using an ad-blocker. Whitelist this site in order to see the video. I know no one likes watching ads, but they allow me to create tons of free content for you. Thanks!)
Easy Bread Recipe Card
Easy 4 Ingredient Bread
Ingredients
- 3 cups All Purpose Flour
- 1.5 cups Warm Water
- 1/2 teaspoon Active Dry Yeast
- 1 teaspoon Salt
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, stir together all four ingredients. Mixture will look shaggy and a bit dry. If it seems wet, add a little more flour.
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature to rest for anywhere between 8 and 24 hours. Dough will get much wetter and will be full of small bubbles.
- Generously flour a cutting board. Gently tip the dough onto the cutting board, using a spatula to scrape it all out of the bowl.
- Dough will be very soft and wet. Using floured hands, quickly grab the top and bottom edges of the dough and pinch them together in the middle, forming a loaf shape. You can see how to do this in the instructional video.
- Spray or grease a loaf pan. Pick up the cutting board and dust off excess flour, then tip the board gently to allow dough to fall into the loaf pan.
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes.
- Use a sharp knife to make one long slice across the top of the dough. Bake for 50-55 minutes until top is deep golden brown and loaf sounds very hollow when tapped.
- Remove bread from pan and cool at least 15-20 minutes before slicing with a very sharp serrated knife.
Notes
Lucy Kent~England says
Thanks for this Autumn
sadly yeast is something we can’t buy at the moment
Will def try this when/if the world returns to a kind of
normal 🙂
Hope that you and yours remain safe
Amanda Hunter says
Hi Autumn
I have to start by saying my daughters name is also Autumn is not a common name but I love it. my question my crust is hard and thick what am I doing wrong?
Jamey says
Can you use instant yeast? Because that’s what I have left.
autumn says
Sure, that should be fine.
Martha Dance says
I love the ease of making this bread. It tastes so good. I’ve been making sourdough for weeks and this is a nice change. It’s actually easier the the sourdough. Thanks so much.
Julie says
Could I use my sourdough starter instead of yeast?julie
Sarah says
I’m thinking the same thing as our yeast is running low. I’m going to try the recipe with 3/4c sourdough starter and reducing the water to 1 1/4c from what I can see from other recipes. We’ll see! Have you tried it with sourdough starter?
Mariola Szeliga says
Thank you Autumn,
First time came out very good. Great recipe!
Mary says
Can you substitute white flour with almond flour?
Diane Gauker says
Hello, I’m a little nervous, my bread dough is in the oven but after 25 hours (I couldn’t get to it exactly at 24 hours)! It was so liquid-y..! I plopped it in the loaf pan but it was definitely toooo wet (couldn’t pick it up and pinch it like you said) & I’m praying for the best 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 What did I do wrong 😢was it the extra hour?? Thank you for any advice & will let you know how it turns out 🙏🏼💗
Paula says
This was delicious and beyond easy. I whip up the ingredients before bed, cover and cook first thing in the morning. I even used yeast that was supposed to have expired in 2014 And it did great. Sent the recipe to my grand daughters (12 and 7 yrs old) to make for Mother’s Day.
Jackie Cicora says
I’m anxious to try this. I’ve loved and passed on your artisan bread recipe many times. It is a favorite of ours. No matter what I added or did to it, it always turned out wonderful. Don’t you wonder…what was all that business about kneading?
Sincerely,
Jackie Cicora