For Thanksgiving, I made my family’s famed pumpkin rolls. They are delicious and wonderful in every way. But they take absolutely forever to make. They are a huge amount of labor, too.

Luckily, not all breads are so labor intensive. Peasant bread, for instance, is very simple and easy to make! So I made some recently, to very happy results.

Peasant bread is super simple. It’s just yeast, sugar to feed the yeast, warm water for the yeast to live in, flour, and some salt. Also, butter to grease the pans. (If you’re vegan, you could use cooking spray. It’s really quite versatile.) And that’s it! Honestly, while they take, like, four hours to make, almost all of that time is just sitting around waiting for the yeast to bloom, waiting for the bread to rise, waiting some more for the bread to rise, waiting for the bread to bake, and waiting for the bread to cool enough to cut and eat. So, yeah, it’s all about the yeast. It’s a very needy ingredient, what can I say?

But I really enjoyed making this bread the other day. It makes a perfect two loaves. Perfect for thoroughly testing one for poison and donating the other to some hungry soul who appreciates homemade bread and is willing to take it off your hands so you don’t eat ALL of it yourself. It really is the perfect bread.

So that was a good day. If anyone wants to try their hand at baking bread for the first time, peasant bread is a great starter!