Bread Recipe Tips and Techniques

You probably eat bread every day. Bread is a basic staple in almost every single diet across the globe. As superchef and food writer James Beard once said: “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods, and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” And what’s better than making your own bread with recipes that suit your taste?!

Suggested Recipes:

Brown Rice Bread
Honey Oat Bread
Bara Brith (Currant Bread) Welsh

The beauty of bread recipes is that you can change them around. You can lower the fat by substituting some of the oil with an equal amount of pureed prunes, mashed bananas, applesauce or any other fruit puree. Add nuts, dried fruit, fresh fruit or chocolate as desired.

Making your own bread has a lot going on for it. You know exactly what goes into every loaf, it’s much cheaper than store-purchased bread, tastier, more healthy and easier than you may think. All you need are a few staple ingredients to make a simple yet mouth-watering loaf at home from scratch. For a basic loaf, combine dry ingredients together in a large bowl, stir well with a wooden spoon and knead the dough on a floured surface until it is firm, elastic, and not sticky.

Kneading is an extremely important part of bread making and ensures that your bread dough rises properly. Compress and stretch the dough repeatedly for approximately 10 minutes so as to form the gluten protein complex, which strengthens the dough and holds in gases that will make the bread rise. Once the dough feels soft and elastic, form the dough into a round shape and place it in a bowl to rise. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and leave to rise somewhere fairly warm. Temperature plays an important role; the warmer the room, the faster your dough will rise. 

After the bread dough has roughly doubled in size, punch the dough down using your fist. Shape the dough to fit in the exact pan size specified in the recipe to ensure that the dough will rise properly. After shaping, the dough goes through a second rising to double in size again before it is baked seam side down.

Once the bread is ready, the really tricky part is to make a few pretty slices. To avoid squishing your loaf, be sure to let the bread cool completely before slicing. There are several options for slicing bread. You can use an electric carving knife, a meat slicer or any other knife that has a sharp-enough edge to break through the tip of the loaf without smashing the slices. Consider purchasing a bread slicer. This handy tool makes your bread slices even and thinner without getting crumbs all over the kitchen. 

Suggested Recipes:

Aloha Bread
Challah
Alexandrian Cumin Bread
Aggie's Irish Soda Bread
Dakota Bread