Anyone else started baking bread for the first time?

[AudTheDeepMinded]

Hello fellow inmates! I've tried baking bread before and never had much success. I bought a bread maker last week and think I've cracked it on the second loaf today, bloody gorgeous (alright, I know it is just sticking in the right ingredients in the right order but I feel a great sense of accomplishment nonetheless!). How's yours going? and has anyone a good recipe for decent pizza dough?

Btw breadsticks are very easy and good for making with children. I used to use a nice recipe from the River Cottage bread book.

Like others on here we usually make our own bread in the breadmaker after we decided that we really wanted to cut down on ultra-processed food. We're now rapidly running out of flour and yeast because everyone seems to be buying it. I hope they are actually making bread and not just stashing it away :/

My sourdough starter is equal amounts of flour and tepid water. I use a mix of wholemeal and ordinary white flour. Adding in a few chopped grapes will really get it going. I start with 50g of flour and 50ml of water but you can double up (and double up on feeds later)

Feed another 50g flour and 50ml water for a couple of days then tip half away, feed again, and leave anther day. Then it's ready to use. If you don't want to use it for a while, just leave the starter in the fridge well covered and it will be fine.

You can buy starters online if you don't want to make one yourself. I bought fermipan yeast online from eBay yesterday so it is still around

I've been making all my own bread for almost a year now.

However since all this panic buying have been unable to get yeast and flour for love or money so have actually started to have to buy bread again. Not impressed

For yeasted and sourdough bread, try having a look at Bake with Jack: www.bakewithjack.co.uk

I went on one of his sourdough courses ages ago - and his videos are really clear. I made my sourdough starter from his 'recipe' as well - four days of adding 25g rye flour and 25g room-temperature water if I remember correctly. Worked first time.

Blimey, no-one answered last night, thought I'd killed the thread before it started! So lovely to hear about your baking. Our loaf is history, kids loved it and wolfed it down. Baked flapjacks this afternoon with random seeds and dried fruit found in the cupboard, not all of it was necessarily in date but we're risking it!

This is a recipe for a non-yeast sourdough starter with clicky links for bread from it here You'll need to make the starter a week in advance, it uses plain flour for it, and ideally bread flour for the bread itself, but it's fairly easy to follow, and has pics of how the starter should look, which I found helpful.

I've been making my own for a few months now and don't like bought bread anymore. I usually use the Paul Hollywood bloomer recipe. I've bought proper bread tins recently so that the slices now fit in the toaster and have discovered that putting the dough out in the sun makes it rise quickly and the whole process takes much less time. I have a KitchenAid with a dough hook so no kneading for me. Otherwise I might not make it quite so often. I make a loaf at least every other day. I only have enough flour for around 4 more loaves which is worrying as we are self isolating for 14 days.