Yummiest Bread Recipe Ever–Italian Peasant Bread

First, a few words that have nothing to do with bread!

Today my post is going to be short and sweet.  If you follow us on Facebook {and if you don’t, you should!}, then you know that our newly adopted golden retriever, Sunny, just had knee surgery last week.  Sunny is nine years old and suffered tremendous neglect all of his life.  I won’t tell you the details, because you will cry, and who needs that on a Monday morning?!  When he was surrendered to the rescue, he weighed 145 pounds, hadn’t been to the vet since he was a year old, and probably hadn’t been bathed or had his nails trimmed in the same amount of time.

Here he is when he was first surrendered to the rescue:

Anyway, our poor boy is down to 110 pounds, but a lifetime of being obese caused him to tear the canine equivalent of his ACL.  Since we had just adopted him, our wonderful, fabulous local rescue organization {Middle Tennessee Golden Retriever Rescue} agreed to pay for his surgery (I’m not sure if we could have done it otherwise) and he should make a full recovery.

Here’s Sunny now–his eyes still look kind of sad, but I promise that he has the BEST life with us!

All that being said, I don’t have any fabulous projects that I’ve completed over the weekend.  I’m too busy icing Sunny’s knee, doing passive range of motion exercises, and helping him outside!  Oh, yes, and vacuuming–nothing like having two golden retrievers to get you vacuuming every. single. day!

So I thought I’d use today’s post to share one of my very favorite recipes with you.  I love baking bread, and most times I use whole wheat flour, but this is one time where I gladly cheat.  I make it exactly as the recipe says, usually mixing the dough in my bread machine and then finishing it in the oven, although you can easily do the entire recipe by hand if you don’t have a bread machine.  It tastes almost exactly like the bread at Macaroni Grill, and it is absolutely delicious!

With thanks to Jamie Renee, who published the recipe on Food.com.  Great job!

Italian Peasant Bread for Bread Machine Recipe

Ingredients:

3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons rosemary
1 tablespoon yeast
additional rosemary (to garnish)
salt (to garnish)

Directions:

1.  Place ingredients, according to manufacturer’s directions into your bread machine.
(some call for all liquids, or all dry ingredients first, so know your machine)

2.  Set machine to “dough cycle” and wait. (This takes most machines about an hour and a half for a full cycle).

3.  Remove from machine when cycle is complete and place on a lightly greased baking sheet.

4.  Shape dough by hand, into a rectangular mound, spreading kind of thin, maybe an inch or two of thickness.

5.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for about an hour or until doubled in size. (This is a good time to go ahead and turn the oven on to preheat and help warm the kitchen).

6. Brush with a little olive oil, sprinkle with rosemary and salt if desired. (This is the way its done at Macaroni Grill).

7.  Bake at 375°F for 20-25 minutes until crust is golden and crispy. Bread is meant to be a flatter shape and not a high rising bread.

8. Have everyone tear their pieces of bread with their hands, and serve with olive oil flavored with fresh ground pepper.

Enjoy!

Read more at: Food Network

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