Homemade bread

[SolitaryTree]

I’ve never made my own home made bread before and would really love to learn how.
Does anybody mind sharing an easy foolproof bread making recipe please?

Try checking out Bake with Jack (website and YouTube) - so helpful

www.easypeasyfoodie.com/easy-wholemeal-soda-bread/

I don't use buttermilk, I use ordinary milk with a teaspoon of lemon juice.

Tastes amazing, is healthy and cheap.

Soda bread, whilst delicious, really doesn't keep for more than a day. If you want to make a yeasted loaf which does keep for up to a week you will need to use Strong Bread Flour, Dried Active Yeast (you can buy small sachets in the supermarket if you don't want to invest in a tin of it yet), salt, water, some oil and elbow-grease.
Assuming you have a loaf tin, proceed as follows:
For a 1lb loaf tin, use 300 gms Strong White Bread Flour, 1 tsp salt, 1tsp yeast Dried Active Yeast (don't let the yeast touch the salt as salt kills yeast) 195ml warm water and a Tsp Olive Oil. Mix together and then knead by hand until the dough is smooth and stretchy. YouTube is excellent so spend a bit of time watching people doing this. You will need to knead for a good 5 minutes but it is a great stress-buster! This builds the gluten which gives the bread its structure.
Leave in a covered bowl to double in size (probably around 60 - 90 minutes), then knock the air out, knead for another half a minute and then form in to a roll and drop it in to your greased loaf tin (I grease with block butter and dust with flour first). Again, cover it and let it double in size. then slash the top with a very sharp knife and put in to a pre-heated oven at 200-200 deg.C for 30 minutes. You will know when it is baked as, when taken out of the tin the base of the loaf will sound hollow when you tap it.
Although it takes around 2.5 - 3hrs to make a loaf, it actually only takes 20 minutes of your time.
If you like what you have baked, practice and then, as your confidence grows, try adding things like seeds or substitute some other flours like Wholemeal (doesn't rise as much) or Spelt.

Bear in mind if your house is as chilly as mine is at the mo, it's not a great time of year to learn to make bread.

If you don't have a proving drawer in your oven (I'd love one!) use your airing cupboard (if you have an old school boiler rather than combi boiler) to prove your dough. If you don't have a warm airing cupboard, I've had success with putting it in the oven on the lowest setting with the door slightly ajar.

We have the Panasonic Croustina and it really could not bec easier to make good, crusty bread. Throw in the ingredients, turn it on, done. Takes less than 10 minutes, including cleaning up. We have completely stopped buying supermarket bread. On weekends I sometimes do sourdough bread, which takes more effort, but during the week this is all we use.