I have to tell y’all how proud I am of my homemade french bread! I could not believe how gorgeous it turned out! Take a look:

Doesn’t it look like what you get at the store? Oh my gosh! It was SO fresh and soft and….hmmm, hmmm, good. I used this bread to make some delicious sandwiches that was a knock off from something we ate at Pizza Hut. Be on the lookout for that recipe later on this weekend, but for now…how about the recipe for these lovlies?

I wound up making four loaves of bread from this one recipe, so I froze the rest of them to use for garlic bread for some new pasta recipes I am making next week.

Cheddar French Bread

Ingredients
2 packages of active dry yeast
2 and 1/2 cups of warm water
1 tablespoon of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil
7 cups of all purpose flour
cheddar cheese for sprinkling on bread

Directions

Put warmed water in a bowl and add yeast. Dissolve yeast in warm water.

Add salt, butter, and flour. Mix these together until well blended. Dump out onto a floured surface and knead for five minutes. Check to see how pliable the dough is. It will be sticky.

Take a clean bowl and grease it well. Place dough in bowl and roll it around to coat it in the oil. Cover top and let rise for about an hour or until doubled in size.

Punch dough down and divide into fourths. Roll each fourth into a rectangle. You may want to make sure to roll them out rather thin because when they rise they will get pretty big. Now begin to roll the rectangle up as tight as you can get into a long roll. Be sure to fold ends under and seam together the ending position.

With a sharp knife, make four diagonal cuts on the top. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle cheddar cheese on top. Bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes.