It’s been ~4 years since I began baking my own bread and it’s become one of the easiest skills to learn. Granted, I usually make the same two bread recipes at any given time, but I’ve tried my hand at naan-esque flatbreads a couple of times. Those haven’t come out as good as proper Indian restaurants but it’s still fun to try. Assuming you’re not following some hellish low-carb lifestyle or need to avoid gluten, baking your own bread is relatively easy and a fun way to make the kitchen smell amazing.
My go-to recipe is a no-knead ~artisinal~ bread I found on Pinterest. With four ingredients: salt, yeast, warm water, and the flour of your choice, you’ll be chowing down on bread in no time. This one is probably the easiest to adjust due to how simple the ingredients are. Making a golden-crusted, chewy rosemary bread just calls for as much rosemary as I can stand, and swapping out all-purpose flour for bread flour. Instead, if I’m feeling very earthy-crunchy, I’ll use whole wheat flour instead and include add-ins like whole flax seeds, millet, and chia seeds. Be warned though, whole wheat flour doesn’t screw around and it will create a pretty dense loaf. A possible downside to this recipe is that it calls for a minimum of 8 hours to rise at room temp. I usually leave it for the full 24 hours for sake of convenience and laziness but I’ve had successful loaves at both times.
My next project will be trying a sourdough starter. I’ve attempted it a couple of times and promptly forgot to feed it which eventually killed it. Once our housing situation has been figured out and settled, I’ll be trying it again because sourdough is delicious.
Dry enjoyable reading! Keep up the good work!
That was supposed to say very, not dry.
Thanks! 🙂