I LOVE bread. Never once did I think I cold ever do one of those low-carb diets. It simply is not in my DNA. I NEED unrefined, processed, bleached flour. Preferably with butter. Unfortunately my efforts to make bread haven’t been very successful. It is not from a lack of trying, but if I do end up with a worthwhile product, often times I can’t honestly say it was worth the effort. I mean really – you can pick up a good loaf of bread at most grocery stores now days with zero effort. All this has changed now with this recipe…

Seriously, it takes TIME (you know the dough rising and all that), but in terms of actual hands on time, it is maybe ten minutes for the whole recipe. You dump everything in your mixer, let it mix for a few minutes, then let it rise, covered with a cloth overnight (in the same bowl – no transferring the dough to an oiled bowl or anything). The next morning shape it into a loaf, let it rise for one hour and then pop it in the oven for thirty minutes. Voila! Crusty, warm, homemade bread. Delicious!

Country Bread
Adapted from King Arthur’s Flour

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups water (temperature doesn’t matter, you don’t need to proof the yeast – LOVE THIS!)
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax (if you don’t have this, just up the whole wheat flour up by another 1/4 cup)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. active dry yeast

Directions

Stir together all of the ingredients in a stand mixer with the dough hook. The dough will come away from the sides of the bowl and look like this:

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a cloth and let it rest overnight or for at least 8 hours.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into the loaf shape of your choosing on lightly greased sheet pan. Let the dough rise for 1 hour. It will look like this:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and bake for about 25-30 minutes until the bread is golden brown. That’s it – how easy was that?!