I want to make bread. What do I need?

[Barbararara]

I feel I’ve missed a trick not learning to make my own bread.
Obviously with flour and yeast in short supply it’s not the time to try. But in the meantime should I start saving up for a good bread maker, or a good kitchen mixer? Or just do it all myself and get lovely toned arms not going to happen

Just do it by hand. It's easy and doesn't take much effort. Obviously the lack of yeast/flour is going to out it on hold for a bit.

Here is a no knead bread which is very easy (the recipe is a bread I grew up with in NZ)

www.thekitchenmaid.com/2012/11/kitchen-diy-vogels-bread.html

People will say you dont need one but we love our Panasonic. Chuck in the ingredients and 4 hours later, out comes a delicious, consistent, effortless loaf. Every time. unless DH forgets to add the yeast

Your first challenge will be to find somone selling strong bread flour

What sort of bread do you like?

We have a bread maker but I prefer making by hand tbh, try this once you’ve found flour and yeast!

I love our bread maker, as pp's have said it's not a necessity but it's a lovely thing to wake up to freshly-baked bread on a sunday morning (can you tell lockdown has aged me 47 years - I spend every evening making a treat for the following day and saturday's treat is always sunday morning bread!)

Check your local mini supermarket or corner shop for yeast and flour - ours is always well-stocked and will always pop something aside for me if there's none in stock when I visit.

I also like some of the packet mixes

If you're in a town or city, try small local shops, ethnic shops, wholefood shops for bread flour and yeast, there is some available in my area. You could ask on your local facebook pages. (Obviously I'm not recommending going to lots of different shops, ask around first.)

Also, kneading bread can be quite therapeutic!

We've been making bread all lockdown. We have been using regular plain flour rather than strong or bread flour and it's turning out just fine. You need plain flour, yeast, and that's about it really. You can make soda bread without yeast but I've never tried that. I presume you need bicarbonate of soda but I've not got round to looking it up.

I’ve just made a loaf of soda bread (no yeast required) in 30 minutes. I used;
Plain flour 300g
Carton of buttermilk 275ml (easily available in supermarket)
Teaspoon salt
Teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Mix dry ingredients first
Then mix in buttermilk
Stir it until it forms a dough
Make it into a round ball and put on a floured baking tray.
Score a deep cross with a knife.
Bake at 160 fan oven for 30 minutes