Easy Peasy Braided Bread

 I have to say, I love my bread machine. I never made bread before I got a bread machine (well, maybe once or twice, but not very often at all). It just wasn't worth the time to me. I mean all the time to mix up ingredients then let it rise, then punch it down and let it rise again and so on and so forth. Just way too much work. Plus, I am not an early riser so by the time I started the bread we might be eating it at Midnight. So I absolutely love my bread machine because using it means that we can have fresh bread any day we want, it only takes about 20 minutes of my time, I just have to wait a little while for it. Sometimes if I want to be fancy but not spend tons of time on bread I will make the dough in the bread machine then shape it in a fun way. One of my favorite ways to shape bread is to braid it. It comes out so fancy, but it really only took minimal work. So here it is, The Easy Peasy way to make braided bread.

First Things first, if you don't have a bread machine consider getting one. If you want to find one for a good price check your local Good Will and garage sales. If you want to make bread the old fashioned way please feel free to skip this step :)

Make your favorite bread dough recipe, whatever that happens to be. I chose to make 1 loaf of french bread and 1 loaf of honey oat bread.

Roll dough into a ball on floured surface

Form into 3 equal-ish balls

Roll each ball into a long string of dough

Press ends of each string together

Braid like hair. (The one on the left side over the middle, then the one on the right side over the middle, then left, then right, etc)

Pinch the other end together

Sometimes I just bake the braid on a flat cookie sheet. This time I put it in a loaf pan to make slicing easier. You can let it rise a little more if you want your bread more airy, or you can go ahead and bake it if you like more dense loaves.

Bake however your recipe says. I think mine says something like bake at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour. I decided to make a little roll too, just for fun :)

Here are my 2 loaves. Aren't they pretty!

The honey oat bread

Linked up to:
Tater Tots and Jello, Naptime Crafters, Frugal Girls, A Pinch of Joy, Uncommon, Addicted to Recipes,