Banquet Boule Bread
Bring your holiday crowd together with one massive bread loaf that serves everyone and makes your hosting responsibilities easier and less stressful. When you bring out this massive loaf to serve your guests, they will admire your baking skills! You can quickly and effortlessly prepare, bake, and serve this massive banquet boule bread for your next holiday crowd and know you will have enough bread for the party!
Equipment
- 1 12 inch Dutch oven
- 2 zip-lock freezer bags
Ingredients
Proofing the Yeast (add ingredients to each bag)
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- 2 ¼ tsp dry active yeast
- 2 tbsp sugar, honey, or maple syrup
For the Dough
- Proofed yeast mixture as above
- 4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup cup lukewarm water
- 1 ½ tsp sea salt
- 2 tbsp sugar, honey, or maple syrup
- 2 tbsp melted butter oil to brush the bread after baking
Instructions
Proofing the Yeast (add ingredients to each bag)
- Place the water in the zip lock bags, one recipe per bag.
- Add in the sugar, honey, or maple syrup to dissolve, and sprinkle the yeast over the water. Gently knead bottom of bag to mix.
- Allow the yeast to sit in a warm place for about 15 minutes, until it’s activated and becomes bubbly and frothy.
For the Dough
- Add in the flour and oil or butter one batch per bag. Close the bags with the air squeezed out and knead for ten minutes.
The First Rise
- Zip the bags closed and put them aside to rise.
- Once the dough in both bags is doubled in size and both bags are poofed up, open the bags and punch down the dough. Turn the bags inside out onto a floured surface and begin to knead both doughs together into one large, smooth dough ball. Knead for about ten minutes.
- You will end up with a giant smooth dough ball ready for the second rise!
The Second Rise
- Line your Dutch oven with crinkled parchment paper and place the large dough ball in the Dutch oven. Your Dutch oven will not even become dirty with the lining! This will make it easy to remove the bread from the Dutch oven after baking.
- Parchment Paper Tip: Crinkling the parchment paper into a ball and then uncrinkling it helps the parchment paper line pans better and forms a better shape for the pans you use.
- Cover the dough with greased plastic wrap or a clean warm damp towel to rise until doubled in size and it has filled out to the edges of the Dutch oven and risen above the rims.
Baking the Boule Bread
- Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes.
- Immediately after removing it from the oven, brush the top of the loaf with butter.
- Once the parchment paper edges have cooled, carefully lift the loaf out of the Dutch oven with the paper and place it on a cooling rack to completely cool.
Slicing the Bread
- The best thing about this bread recipe is that you can slice this loaf into one-foot-long slices and dress the slices with any toppings you desire and bake for an extra 15 to 20 minutes. You can serve these one-foot-long slices with garlic, parmesan, and shredded cheese, or do a pizza topping!
- Slice the bread lengthwise, making one-foot-long slices. You can then slice each slice in half into 6 inches each, making them perfect sizes for serving, and place them in a napkin-lined basket to serve to your guests. I was preparing mine with garlic bread. I still needed to add butter and cheese to these slices.