Sesame Semolina Loaf Recipe: Crispy Crust, Tender Crumb

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Bread with soup. Bread for toast. Bread to sop up the last streaks of sauce, gravy, or pan juices. You might be able to survive without bread, but it certainly makes life better. A big, puffy, chewy, golden loaf of homemade bread can transform an ordinary day into something special.

This recipe isn’t an instant or no-knead loaf, but it’s absolutely worth the time. The aroma while it’s baking is irresistible. Tear a warm corner from this loaf and watch a pat of cold salted butter melt into the soft crumb — bliss. If you let the loaves cool completely, they slice cleanly for sandwiches or toast, but fresh-from-the-oven torn pieces are hard to resist.

When warm and torn into hunks, this bread is perfect for sopping up soups, sauces, dressings, and gravies. When cooled and sliced, it makes excellent sandwiches and toast. The crumb is soft and yielding, while the crust turns golden and crisp under a crunchy topping of sesame and other seeds or flakes, depending on how you dress it.

My household loves that this recipe yields two large loaves. One I usually top simply with sesame seeds; the other gets an “everything” treatment with sesame, poppy seeds, onion flakes, and garlic flakes. The kids tear off generous pieces, slather them with butter, and make happy noises. They prefer the sesame loaf cooled, sliced thick, toasted on one side and crowned with jam. On nights I make them wait, they hover in the kitchen until the bread basket appears.

This is a bread of beauty: a deep golden crust topped with crunchy seeds and a soft interior. The recipe is very lightly adapted from the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Catalogue, and their test kitchen deserves credit for a dependable formula that’s forgiving and consistently excellent.

I’ve been making this for nearly ten years, ever since I found the printed recipe in their tempting catalogue. It’s hard to truly ruin this dough: I’ve left it to rise overnight, rushed it through a second rise, and swapped bread flour for all-purpose when necessary — and it’s worked every time. If you’re new to working with yeast, this is a friendly, forgiving recipe. If your kitchen isn’t warm, don’t worry — the dough will take longer to rise but it will still rise. Keep it lightly covered so the surface doesn’t dry out.

Please try this. Pretty please. With sesame seeds on top.

Sesame Semolina Bread

Gently adapted from King Arthur Flour Baker’s Catalogue.

Scroll to the bottom for an easy-print version of this recipe!

To Shape the Dough:

Turn the dough out onto a clean surface and form it into a neat mass. Divide the dough in half, then divide each half into three pieces. Cover three of the pieces with a towel while you work with the other three.

Pat one piece into a rough oval. Use the side of your hand to press an indentation along the length of the dough piece. Fold the dough together along the indentation and roll lightly with your hands to form a thick rope about 12–14 inches long. Repeat with the other two pieces so you have three ropes of roughly equal length. Line them up in parallel with the ends facing you.

To Braid the Dough:

Gently grasp the end of the rope on the far left and lift it toward the center, leaving the far end on the counter. Cross it over the rope nearest to it and lay it down. Now grasp the end of the rope on the far right and lift it toward the center, leaving its far end on the counter, then cross it over the (now) center rope and lay it down. Repeat this maneuver — far left over center, far right over center — until the ends are too short to continue. Pinch the ends together and tuck them under the braid. Go back to the center and finish braiding toward the top; pinch and tuck the other end under when finished.

Either line a half-sheet pan with parchment or set a baking stone out to use. Transfer the braided loaf to the prepared pan or stone, cover it lightly, and let it rise in a warm place until puffy and about doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Whisk one beaten egg until loose and brush it generously onto the risen braids. Sprinkle with your chosen toppings (sesame seeds, poppy seeds, onion flakes, garlic flakes, or coarse salt).

Bake 18–26 minutes, until the loaves reach your preferred shade of golden to deep brown and feel firm on top. Turn the oven off and prop the door open slightly to cool the loaves gradually for at least an hour. Or tear into them immediately if you can’t resist.

This post was first published March 4, 2011.