To prepare yeast dough for bread, I recommend using only the highest grade psh. flour. The recipe also requires yeast for baking bread, plain water, and salt.
Yeast bread will be baked with the same composition as round loaves, loaves, bread rolls and sticks, flat cakes and flat breads.
In the event that the composition indicated in the recipe, add 1-2 tbsp. rast. oil when calculated at 1.5 kg of flour, the mixture will be ideal for baking delicious flatbreads.
By the way, this recipe can be safely used to bake pizza and flat pies with savory filling. Homemade bread always tastes better, see this from your own experience.
Bread made with dry yeast, like the dough for it, has a fairly long shelf life. The dough can be placed in the freezer and stored frozen for several days.
If you want to diversify the taste of homemade baked goods, then you can add a little rust, buckwheat, oatmeal or psh to the recipe. flour, but of a lower grade.
As for the exact quantity, you need to know that to give a light flavor, you need to put a couple of tablespoons of flour in the bread per 1 kg of main flour.
To change the taste more significantly, it is worth adding to psh. flour 25% of another type of flour, even more is possible. I propose to dwell on how to prepare bread dough for baking at home.
Basic recipe for preparing dough for baking homemade bread
Components for 1500 gr. flour: 900 ml water; 30 gr. St. yeast and 1 tbsp. dry: 1 tbsp. salt. You will get 2.4 kg of finished bread. 2 loaves are baked for 45 to 60 minutes.
- Components for 1000 gr. flour: 600 ml water; 20 gr. St. yeast and 2 tsp. dry: 2 tsp. salt. You will get 1.6 kg of finished product.
- Components for 800 gr. flour: 450 ml water; 15 gr. St. yeast and 0.5 tbsp. dry: 0.5 tbsp. salt. You will get 1.2 kg of finished product. Bake the bread for 45 to 60 minutes.
- Components for 300-400 gr. flour: 200 ml water; 6.5 gr. St. yeast and 0.5 tsp. dry: 0.5 tsp. salt. You will get 0.5 kg of finished product. Bread should be baked for 25 to 35 minutes.
Algorithm for preparing yeast dough:
- Dissolve yeast in warm water. Leave for a while and whisk; in the case of dry active yeast, working with fast-acting yeast is even easier; you don’t even have to dissolve it in liquid, but immediately put it in flour.
- I pour 1.5 kg of flour into a bowl and mix the salt in there. I pour warm water into the mixture. Before kneading the dough for bread, remember that the flour must be sifted. I mix the dough and spread the mixture on the table. I knead for about 15 minutes. The mass should be homogeneous and not stick to the palms at all.
- I put the dough in a warm place for 2.5 hours. It will fit there. Knead the dough and leave it aside. The mass can be cooked further if pressing on it with your finger, the mark does not disappear immediately.
- I put the dough on the table, knead it, divide it into 2 parts. I give them shape, cover them and put them in a warm place for half an hour, or even more. I again check readiness using the above method. Don't forget that I wrote this recipe for 1.5 kg of flour.
- I preheat the oven in advance, 230 gr. will be sufficient. I put a bowl filled with boiling water on the bottom so that the space in the oven is saturated with water vapor. I place the baking sheet to bake, but I spray the bread with water before doing so. For these purposes, I use a spray bottle.
- When about 20 minutes have passed. baking, you can remove the bowl and leave the bread for another 15 minutes. Keep an eye on the baking, because if the sides of the baked goods burn, then you should reduce the temperature, as well as reduce the baking time to 10 minutes.
I get the bread. I let the loaf cool. I cut the bread into pieces using a knife, preferably a sharp one. To understand that the baked goods are ready, I follow this rule: I knock on the bread with my knuckles; if a hollow sound is heard, the baked goods are ready.
Yeast dough requires attention, but following my algorithm of actions, which includes the recipe given above, you will not encounter problems.
Homemade bread on water
To make homemade bread with water, you need to take the following products:
750 gr. flour; 600 ml water; 1 tbsp each sah. sand and salt; 3 tsp dry yeast.
Cooking algorithm:
- I put all the ingredients and pour water into one bowl, but you only need to take 4 tbsp of flour. I put the bowl on the stove and stir well. The dough should be warm, but do not overheat it, otherwise there is a high chance of ruining the yeast dough. To cope with this task easier, you can heat the water, then add the ingredients and stir them. I leave the dough aside for 25 minutes.
- When the dough becomes larger, you need to add the sifted flour. Do this carefully using a spoon. Approximately 30 tbsp. I'm making a batch.
- I put flour on the table and dough on top. I knead. The mass should not stick to your hands.
- In a bowl greased with vegetable oil. oil, put a lump of dough. I pierce the yeast dough with 10 fingers, touching the bottom. This will release carbon dioxide from the mass. I leave it warm for an hour or even more.
- During this time the dough will increase. After lubricating your hands, grow. oil, take out the dough, knead it, and immediately let it hang. I put it in the form. I repeat the procedure again with the release of carbon dioxide. I leave it aside for an hour for the dough to rise again.
- I heat up the oven. The temperature should be about 220 degrees. Only then for 35 minutes. I send the dough in forms. I take the baked goods out of the oven and, after waiting a couple of minutes, remove them from the mold.
Place the finished bread on a wire rack and wait until it cools completely. Only after this can you eat homemade bread.
Kneading
The kneading recipe is not complicated, I do it like this:
- For 1 kg loaf of homemade bread you need to use 0.5 liters of water. I pour it into a large bowl. The liquid cannot be used cold; the water must be heated to room temperature. Only then do I add 1 tbsp to it. sugar, mix the mixture. Sugar can be cut down, but you should rely solely on your personal preferences. The recipe calls for its use only because it is necessary to activate the yeast.
- As for yeast, you can use 1 tbsp. dry mixture, the manufacturer does not matter. The yeast should be left in this state; you should not even stir the composition. Only after 15 minutes they will begin to swell. The reaction is normal, which means the process has passed. Now you can safely stir the mixture.
- Add salt to the mixture, about 1 tbsp. If the mass is not salty or you want to bake homemade over-salted bread, then you can add even more salt. At the last stage I add flour to the mixture. Again, I always recommend sifting the flour before use in order to saturate the mixture with oxygen. This rule is no exception this time. To bake homemade loaves of bread, use only high-quality flour of the highest grade. You can dilute it with the first grade. The proportions are 1 to 1. In general, it will take about 4 tbsp. flour, but you may need a little more.
- Add flour gradually, the portions should be small. You need to knead thoroughly without stopping doing this. When the dough composition does not stick to your palms, you should transfer it to a cup and put it in a warm place. It is best to cover the mass with a towel.
This completes the kneading recipe, but this is only half the work done.
Mass approach
In a warm place, the dough should rise 2 times, or even more. It is important that there is no draft around, otherwise there is a chance that the yeast will simply harden. After the first approach takes place, it will take about 1 hour, the dough needs to be beaten.
To do this, I pour the mixture from the cup onto the table, making sure to sprinkle it with flour. When the second approach takes place, I put it in shape. You need to choose a baking dish in advance; be sure to grease it. oil
Baking process
When the composition of the dough “changes”, you will notice that it has become 2 times larger, albeit only visually. The form must be placed in the oven at 220 degrees. at 1.30 min.
If you decide to bake bread in a slow cooker, you should note that your baked goods will take longer to bake - an hour on each side. In this case, you need to remember to turn the bread over.
Bread should only be served when it has cooled down. You can do this in the form of a whole loaf, or you can cut it into portions - everything will depend only on your wishes!
As you can see, every recipe for yeast bread is not complicated, and therefore it is quite possible to bake it personally in your own kitchen.
Your loved ones will appreciate your efforts, because the bread will certainly turn out tastier than a store-bought product. Look at the site for other recipes, perhaps what else might interest you. Have fun in your home kitchen!
My video recipe
Store-bought bread will never taste better than homemade bread - it is not as aromatic, soft, and a day after purchase it completely stale so that you can safely throw it away.
But most women do not know how to bake loaves of bread at home, although there is essentially nothing difficult about it. In addition, you can always add spices, cheese or sausage to bread cooked in your own oven to give it a special taste.
This article presents accessible, simple oven bread recipes at home and some tips that will help you bake a delicious loaf the first time. A novice housewife can bake not only wheat loaves, but also:
- Rye bread;
- Borodinsky;
- With additives.
In addition, there is a method of preparation without using yeast, which will also be discussed below.
Step-by-step recipes for delicious homemade bread in the oven
At the beginning, it should be noted that for the preparation of this kind of baking it is always necessary to purchase high-quality flour. In addition, the yeast used should always be as fresh as possible. If these two points are observed, you can get soft and tasty bread.
Simple by leaps and bounds
The first recipe is dedicated to a simple bread, but very soft and airy. The aroma from its baking will pleasantly spread throughout the kitchen. This recipe can be called a “template” for baking simple homemade bread.
The consistency of the dough should ideally resemble thick cream. 1.5 kg should give just such a result, but if this turns out to be not enough, then there is nothing wrong with adding a little more.
The flour must be sifted, then add butter and salt. It will be most convenient to take a large bowl for this procedure.
The yeast is first placed in heated water, and when it becomes liquid enough, it needs to be poured into a bowl with flour. Now all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed for a quarter of an hour.
After an hour and a half, the kneading procedure is repeated, then the dough needs to be given a few more hours (ideally 180 minutes) for it to settle. During kneading, the mass must be pressed down and carbon dioxide will come out of it.
The dough is distributed into bread baking molds, but if there are none, you can manually form neat loaves.
The mixture should sit in the mold for another hour and then it’s time for baking - the molds with bread are placed in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for an hour.
This is a recipe for the most ordinary, but really tasty bread, to which you can add cheese if you wish. To do this, the easiest way would be to rub it onto a loaf that has not yet cooled down.
We offer you to watch a video so that you can see all the stages of preparing such simple bread at home:
Healthy rye
Rye bread is considered more dietary. To prepare it at home in the oven you need:
- Flour (rye and wheat) – 1 kg each;
- Yeast (it is better to use dry yeast) – 1 table. spoon;
- Water – 1.5 l;
- Sugar - half the table. spoons;
- Salt - 2 teaspoons. spoons;
- Sunflower oil – 1 table. spoon.
Baking rye bread at home in the oven is practically no different from the first recipe.
The water needs to be heated to room temperature, then pour in the yeast, previously mixed in one container with sugar.
Then let it brew for a quarter of an hour.
Sift both types of flour and place in a suitable sized bowl.
Add a little oil (vegetable) and a couple of pinches of salt.
Gradually start adding water with yeast, stirring while doing so.
Knead the mixture and let it sit for 1 hour in a warm and dry place, covering the container with a towel (can be placed in a plastic bag).
Grease the mold for future loaves with oil, place the dough there and leave for 30-40 minutes, covering with a special baking film.
During this time, let the oven preheat.
Bake the bread at 200 degrees for 40-50 minutes.
One head of garlic is sometimes added to rye products for a piquant taste.
Without yeast on kefir
This is a budget-friendly recipe for making loaves with a crispy crust and amazing flavor. For it you will need:
- 300 grams of flour (wheat);
- 1 tsp. spoon of soda;
- 200 milliliters of kefir (you can measure it in a glass);
- 1 tsp. spoon of salt.
The consistency of the dough should be approximately the same as when making pancakes. First you need to mix together all the dry ingredients of the recipe, that is, flour, salt and soda. After this, kefir is added.
Stir what happens with a spoon, and then knead thoroughly with your hands for ten to fifteen minutes. The mass sticks very much to your hands, but you can’t add flour during the cooking process, but you can grease it with butter.
Heat the oven to 200 degrees, place the dough in a baking container, having also greased it first. This bread takes an average of 40 to 50 minutes to bake. It is best to check readiness using a thin wooden stick.
Borodinsky
Borodino loaves are very healthy and have a piquant taste. Preparing this bread at home in the oven requires the use of the following products:
- Rye flour – 3.5 cups;
- Wheat flour – 2 cups;
- Yeast - 2.5 teaspoons. spoons (it’s better to take dry ones);
- Sugar – 3 table. spoons;
- Sunflower oil – 1 table. spoon;
- Salt - 2 teaspoons. spoons;
- Ground coriander – 1 table. spoon;
- Natural cocoa – 3 tables. spoons;
- Water.
The consistency of the dough should be liquid, like sour cream. To achieve this, rye flour (1.5 cups) must be mixed with water at room temperature.
Then add yeast (half a teaspoon) and sugar (1.5 tablespoons) to the resulting mass. Since Borodino bread requires leavening, after completing these steps, the bowl of dough should be placed in a dry and warm place for 2-3 days.
Wheat flour must be sifted and mixed with the remaining rye flour in a deep bowl. Then gradually pour in boiled water.
Add the remaining sugar, yeast, cocoa, a pinch of salt, coriander, butter and a tablespoon of pre-prepared starter. Beat all components thoroughly for 10 minutes.
Place in the pan, cover it with a clean towel and wait about two hours, allowing the future loaf to brew. At 180 degrees in the oven, Borodino bread is baked for half an hour.
Dark bread is served with all soups; it will be especially tasty with borscht and cabbage soup.
By the way, every housewife prepares Borodino bread in her own way and it is very difficult to find the same standard recipe for its preparation. You can only choose the most suitable one for yourself.
Therefore, we suggest watching another video recipe. Perhaps you'll like it better.
Baking bread in an electric oven at home
For an electric oven, you can use any of the recipes listed above. Several important rules must be followed:
- To prevent the bread from burning on the bottom, it should be placed on a baking sheet, previously sprinkled with coarse salt. Dampened paper or special foil will help protect the loaf from burning the top;
- The classic baking temperature for products of this type in an electric oven is 180-200 degrees. This rule applies to the average level;
- If you pour boiling water on the bottom of the oven, the dough will rise correctly. For this purpose, you can also use a bowl of boiling water placed before baking.
Having learned how to bake bread, you can safely take on the preparation of various baked goods: pies, pies, cakes and any other. Start with pies! All the neighbors will come running to you to find out what smells so delicious!
Sometimes it happens that you want something tasty, but you are too lazy to go to the store. Then we start improvising. Surely the recipe for sweet baked apples in the oven described appeared exactly like this.
Do you like mushrooms? Yes, there are rarely people who don’t like them. There are many ways to cook them. For example, mushroom sauce. Various recipes are described. All gourmets are delighted with them!
So, as a result, you can take some really useful tips that will be especially useful for novice housewives:
- The easiest way to check the readiness of bread is with a wooden stick. As an alternative solution, you can use a regular match. If, after piercing the loaf, there is no dough left on the stick, then the baking is ready;
- You can add various ingredients of your own after testing the initial recipe and achieving the correct result. Otherwise, it may not turn out very tasty;
- During kneading, the dough needs to be pressed down a little, so carbon dioxide comes out of it;
- You can replace yeast with ordinary kefir - cheap and tasty;
- It is important to use only high-quality and fresh ingredients, especially flour. If you are careless about the freshness of the products for making bread, then the bread itself will not turn out the best;
- To make the yeast rise faster, the dough should be placed in a warm place. You can even additionally cover the container with the dough with a warm towel or any other suitable thing.
If you follow all these rules, you can prepare really tasty and fluffy bread in the oven at home.
Do you want to know how to bake garlic bread with dill? If yes, then the following video is for you:
It’s impossible to count how many proverbs and sayings about bread people have come up with. Since ancient times, bread has been revered and treated with great respect. Bread is the head of everything! To this day it is a staple food. You won't be full without bread.
Baking is a labor-intensive and time-consuming activity, but this is all compensated by the pleasure that you get from a tasty, aromatic loaf baked with your own hands.
Bread can be baked in the oven, in the oven, in a bread machine, from yeast dough and dough without yeast.
We will present you several recipes for bread that has an appetizing, unique taste.
First of all, let me remind you.
- In the old days they said that the taste of bread depends on kind hands and a kind heart.
- Equally important for tasty, high-quality bread is flour and clean water, their correct ratio in the dough
- I would especially like to note that when kneading the dough, the room should be warm, and the flour should not be cold
- When preparing yeast, it must be thoroughly mixed with water, adding a small amount of flour
- The kneaded dough should be placed in a warm place for fermentation for 4–6 hours.
- Well-fermented dough is porous, has the smell of alcohol and has a convex shape on top
- During fermentation, the dough should be covered with a towel.
You can learn more about how to make sourdough for yeast-free dough
Recipes for delicious bread made from yeast dough in the oven
Homemade bread from A to Z
How to bake white wheat bread at home
To prepare this bread you will need to prepare 1 kg of wheat flour
- 2 glasses of water,
- 30 – 40 g yeast,
- 1 tbsp. spoon of salt,
- 2 tbsp. l. Sahara,
- 1 – 2 tbsp. l. vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp. l. butter
Let's start kneading the dough. Take half the flour, mix it with 1.5 cups of water and yeast. Mix all this very well. It is better to first dilute the yeast and add it to the flour. It is best to knead the dough with your hands, adding a little flour if necessary, until it stops sticking to the walls of the pan.
Keep in mind that the pan should be of such a size that the dough can freely increase in size by 3 times
Cover with a towel and place the pan in a warm place for 3 to 4 hours, kneading it periodically (about every hour).
After the dough has increased by 1.5 - 2 times, knead the dough again, adding the remaining flour, water, salt, sugar and vegetable oil. If you want the dough to be more rich, add one egg to it. Knead everything well, cover the pan, and put it back in a warm place for 1.5 hours.
Prepare the molds, this can be a deep baking sheet, a saucepan, special baking dishes, grease them with oil and place the dough in them, keep in mind that you should not fill the molds completely, since the dough will increase in size during baking.
Place the molds for 20–40 minutes in a warm place, preferably near a warm radiator. The dough will rise a little more.
Now the most crucial moment - baking bread. If the oven is at high temperature and low humidity, we can get low, unbaked, hard bread, so the temperature and humidity need to be created at a certain level.
To begin, heat the oven to 160 - 180 degrees and place a bowl of water on the bottom of the oven. Place the molds on the middle shelf and hold for 6 - 10 minutes, then raise the temperature to 220 - 280 degrees, bake until done, at the end of baking, reduce the temperature again to 180 degrees. Baking time depends on the weight of the loaf, for 1.5 kg - about 1.5 hours.
After removing the bread from the oven, brush it with a 1:1 diluted egg with water or oil. Cover with a towel and leave to cool. After it cools down, you can remove it from the mold.
Start baking - we are sure you will succeed.
An old recipe for homemade bread with yeast
To bake this bread you will need:
- 10 g yeast
- 0.5 cups warm water
- 1 glass of warm milk
- 4 tbsp. l. vegetable oil
- 1 tsp. salt
- wheat flour as needed
You need to pour the yeast into warm water with the addition of 1 tablespoon of flour, stir everything thoroughly. Add salt, milk and butter.
While stirring, add flour little by little until the dough becomes stiff, but soft, tender and does not stick to your hands.
Divide the entire dough into several small koloboks. Flatten slightly and place on a baking sheet. Place in hot oven and bake for approximately 10 minutes.
Check readiness with a match by piercing the bread; if the dough does not stick to the match, the bread is ready. Take it out and place it on a wooden board, covering it with a towel for 20 minutes.
In ancient Russian recipes it was advised to grease the mold with hemp oil, and before baking the bread, keep the flour in a warm place for two days.
How to bake homemade rye bread in the oven
According to professional bakers, real rye bread can only be baked in a Russian oven. Only in it can you get the aroma of real rye bread, and the loaves must be large - about five kilograms.
Well, there are few housewives who have the opportunity to use a Russian oven, and yet we will risk using this recipe for baking it at home in our modern apartments.
To complete our recipe you will need 2 cups of sifted rye flour, 1 cup of water, 25 g of yeast, salt on the tip of a teaspoon.
Take a bowl, pour flour into it. Dissolve the yeast with water, pour it into a bowl, add salt and knead the dough until it is soft, smooth, and homogeneous.
Make a bun out of it, leave in a warm place for 1.5 hours. The dough will ferment and rise, the aroma of fermented rye dough will emanate from it.
After this, knead it well again, place it on a prepared baking sheet, previously greased with oil, and shape it.
Wait about an hour for the dough to rise, place it in the oven preheated to 230 degrees for 30 minutes, after sprinkling it with water.
Remove the finished bread from the mold and lightly moisten the top with water, cover with a towel to cool.
Break off a piece of fragrant, delicious bread and try it with cold milk. The taste is unforgettable.
A simple recipe for baking milky white bread
For this recipe, prepare based on 850 g of wheat flour -
- 1 glass of milk
- 100 g sugar
- 150 g butter
- 20 g yeast
- 3 eggs and salt on the tip of a knife
To begin, dilute the yeast with warm milk, add half the sugar and 100 grams of flour, make a batter, leave it in a warm place for 1 hour.
At this time, we will make the filling; to do this, grind the butter so that it turns white, combine with egg yolks, salt and sugar. Mash all this very well until you obtain a liquid homogeneous mass.
Beat the remaining whites.
Place the dough in a large saucepan, add flour, filling, and egg whites. Knead the dough well, divide into 2 equal parts, form loaves and place them in pre-greased molds.
If desired, the top of the bun can be sprinkled with crushed nuts and brushed with egg. Bake at approximately 180 degrees for 45 minutes.
Recipes for homemade bread made from dough without yeast
Baking a bun according to the recipe with cinnamon and raisins
Take the yolks of 5 eggs and mix with 100 g of powdered sugar until smooth.
0.5 tsp. ground cinnamon, 3 grains of cloves, half a glass of seedless raisins, grated rind of one lemon, add to the resulting mass and mix it all.
Beat the whites, add to the mixture and add 50 g of wheat flour to knead the dough well.
Bake in a greased pan over low heat for 30 minutes.
Potato bread recipe with vanilla
Grind the yolks with powdered sugar until white, add whipped cream, potato flour, vanilla and knead everything well.
Take a mold, preferably a round one, grease with oil and sprinkle flour on top, place the dough in it.
Bake in the oven until done.
Composition of this bread –
- 120 g potato flour
- 10 egg yolks
- 5 proteins
- 150 g powdered sugar
- 0.5 teaspoon vanillin
Cornbread in the oven without yeast
Make a homogeneous mass consisting of 3 egg yolks, 150 g of powdered sugar, add 1 cup of sifted corn flour, grated zest, and juice from one lemon. Knead it all well.
Beat the whites of 12 eggs and pour into the dough, mix lightly.
Bake over low heat in a greased and floured pan.
Recipes for bread made from yeast dough in a bread machine
Bake Tex-Mex Bread with Sweet Peppers in a Bread Machine
Since many people today have electric bread makers in their home kitchens, we decided to give two, in our opinion, original recipes for delicious bread. There are many types of bread makers, and we will do this in a fairly common one, the Tefal model, which is the easiest to use.
- 225 ml water
- 30 g tomato paste
- 6 g salt (1 tsp)
- 290 g sifted wheat flour
Place the container in the bread machine, select mode 5 (baking French bread), product weight 750 g, crust color and start. After the signal, add 100 g of red, yellow and green sweet pepper, cut into small cubes.
How to make Hawaiian bread in a bread machine
For a 750 g loaf, place the ingredients in the container in the following order:
- 135 ml milk
- 1 egg
- 7 g salt (1 tsp)
- 75 g sugar
- 375 g sifted wheat flour
- 5 g dry yeast (1 tsp – 3 g dry yeast)
Place the container in the bread machine, select mode 6 (highest baked bread), product weight 750 g, crust color and start. 5 minutes after the start of kneading, open the lid and add 70 g of soft butter.
After the signal, add 30 g of cocoa powder and 80 g of diced pineapple. At the beginning of the baking process, brush the crust with beaten egg, sprinkle with 10 g of cocoa powder and decorate with 30 g of pineapple rings.
Watch the video on how to bake in a bread machine and the recipe
Video recipe from the chef Homemade rustic bread
You can find out how to store bread at home so that it doesn’t go stale longer.
No store-bought bread can ever replace homemade bread baked with your own hands. We put our energy and all our love for our household into homemade bread. I really love baking bread and, even having acquired a bread machine, I still prepare bread, kneading it with my hands, and bake it in the oven. Being a busy person, I try to find bread recipes that can be prepared in a relatively short period of time. This time I offer you the recipe quick homemade bread, which I tried quite recently, but have already baked three times. The bread is very soft and airy - I highly recommend it!
Ingredients
To make quick homemade bread we will need:
warm water - 210 ml;
dry yeast - 1 tsp;
wheat flour - 320 g;
sunflower oil - 30 ml;
sugar - 1 tsp;
salt - 0.5 tsp.
Cooking steps
Mix dry ingredients: sift flour, add salt, sugar and yeast.
Knead into a soft and pleasant dough. Since flour comes in different densities, its quantity may be slightly larger. I ended up with 20 grams more than in the recipe. Grease a bowl with oil and place the dough in it for 30 minutes, covering with a lid or film.
Homemade bread cooks quite quickly and turns out very soft with an ideal crumb structure.
Bon appetit!
In the new Russia, interest in home baking appeared along with foreign bread machines. The loaves in them really turned out tasty, and when asked “is it worth buying,” the happy owners answered: “It’s worth it!” In the end, not many people purchased these ovens - they were expensive, but the stereotype that baking bread without a miracle machine is too troublesome remained.
Everything ingenious is simple!
In fact, there is nothing difficult in making homemade bread (it is much more difficult to make pies or dumplings). The classic recipe has only four simple ingredients - wheat flour, water, yeast and salt. And this is his strength! There is absolutely no point in chasing dietary flour and village sourdough.
“I would recommend taking regular premium wheat flour; this flour is the easiest to work with,” says Mikhail Bakunin, executive director of the Bread History company, coordinator of the ibake.ru project. “You can also bake with other types of flour, but this is a rather specific process and you can discourage any desire to work on bread."
The fact is that even if the bread is called rye or corn, it is prepared on the basis of wheat flour, and other types are added in small quantities for taste. And all attempts to bake rye bread at home using only rye flour are doomed to failure - the dough simply will not rise.
Experiments with sourdoughs, ancient yeast substitutes, can also end disastrously. They are made from flour and water by simple mixing, and everything would be fine, but the fermentation process takes 3-4 days and requires careful control.
“Sourdough needs to be literally fed, like a small child, adding flour, water, kneading it. It can be made with honey, using grapes, raisins, hops. This is incredibly interesting, but this is for those people who are interested in baking.” , warns Bakunin.
That’s why it’s better to start with regular yeast; it’s much more difficult to spoil it. The main thing is to follow the instructions and use warm water for dilution, not boiling water - this is the most common mistake!
A breath of air for the dough
The main fear associated with baking in general and bread in particular is caused by the need to knead the dough for a long time. Who wants to bend over a table and work intensely with their hands for two hours? But, fortunately, bread does not require such sacrifices - the ingredients only need to be mixed for 5-10 minutes.
“An option for the lazy is a food processor, which has a special hook that kneads the dough. But I advise those who use a mixer to still knead the dough with their hands for one or two minutes, because they have not yet invented a dough mixer that would completely replace hands baker,” says Mikhail.
It is difficult to “ruin” bread at the kneading stage, but it is possible by constantly adding flour to the dough so that it does not stick to the table. And it sticks not because of a lack of flour, but because of a lack of air. To saturate it with oxygen, the kneading process is needed.
After kneading, the dough is left to rise. In some recipes it is placed in a warm, wind-free place for an hour or two, in others it can be placed in the refrigerator overnight. For those who are baking for the first time, it is better to follow the first path.
Without unnecessary movements
After an hour's rest, the next stage is kneading and shaping. In total, it will take about 20 minutes. Provided, of course, that you want to bake a loaf “like in the store” - a beautiful elongated shape with notches. If a more “modest” loaf is suitable, you can do it in ten.
The purpose of kneading is to release excess carbon dioxide bubbles from the dough that were formed during the fermentation process. Here it is important to limit yourself to just a few “folding” movements (see video).
“If you knead the dough for a long time, it makes it denser, it removes the fluffiness, i.e. the less you touch it, the better,” says Mikhail Bakunin.
The kneaded dough, if you have the strength and desire, is divided into portions and shaped. Or they simply put it in a baking dish - this way it will definitely not spread or tear when trying to make a beautiful loaf.
Now the bread again needs heat (to restore the splendor of its shape and the airiness of the crumb, lost during molding), and it is left to rise for 40-60 minutes. Only this time, unlike the rising stage, you need to keep an eye on the dough (but without fanaticism).
“You don’t need to open it every five minutes and see how it’s there. You can guarantee that you won’t touch it for 20-30 minutes. And then you need to gently press the workpiece with your finger, and the finger mark should completely disappear. This shows that the bread is ready - it has risen and at the same time retained its elasticity,” says Bakunin.
Bread likes it hot
Before you put the bread in the oven, you need to take care of its appearance (exterior, as bakers say) - make notches on the surface. A regular razor blade or sharp knife will do for this. On loaves it is customary to make 4-5 cuts diagonally, on loaves - one long one along the “bread ridge”.
“By making cuts on the bread, you determine where the bread will open, where the gas that is formed during the rising process in the oven will escape from the bread. Thus, you additionally control its shape so that it does not crack or rupture,” explains Mikhail .
Bread loves a hot oven, so it is better to turn it on in advance, while kneading, and heat it to a temperature of 250-260ºC. Before loading, you can sprinkle the chamber with water - this will make the bread crust more tender.
"How to check if the bread is ready? One way is to tap the bottom of the bread, it should make a hollow hollow sound," - advises Mikhail Bakunin, project coordinator ibake.ru.
It is almost impossible to resist the aroma of freshly baked bread. But bakers still recommend making an effort. Bread, like wine, needs to ripen, so let it at least cool before sampling. And it is better to store “precious”, hand-made loaves and loaves of bread in linen bags - they go stale in them more slowly.