Stale bread

[Gettingbysomehow]

Is it just me.....everyone single bread loaf I've bought from supermarkets in tne last year tastes stale, sliced or whole. I just can't eat it.
I've decided to start making my own bread. Are they putting something in it that makes it taste like that?.
I've got a week off annual leave so Im going to make my own bread and experiment a bit.

Be careful, and do not do any research on flour. Once you go down that rabbit hole you will be moving to the country and raising your own crops.

Best of luck with the bread! Home made is much nicer, but you might need to add more salt to make up for the lack of added sugar that is in store bought. This is a taste thing, if you are used to store bought, you will be used to it tasting slightly sweet, adding extra salt to home made stuff will stop it tasting bland in comparison.

Making your own is so easy, and much nicer than shop bought. I do a no-kneed recipe and have done for years, easy peasy!

I rarely buy bread these days unless I'm having visitors, then it's thick white for their toast.

Other than that, I make my own version of Irish soda bread every Sunday and slice and freeze for the week. Just 2/3 wholemeal flour 1/3 plain. Add milled (not whole) chia and flax seed, wheat bran, bicarb, buttermilk and salt. Lash it all together and it turns out really good. Sometimes if I have cheese left over at the end of a block I'll grate and add that too.

I'm not a fan of "fluffy" bread, but each to their own!

I make all my own bread but realistically you must freeze it on day one, might be ok for toast second day but not still nice and soft like bought bread because basically there is no real preservative. I slice and freeze it day I bake it.

Above applies to yeast bread, something like a brown soda bread especially a wet mix lasts a few days unfrozen, white soda bread is eat on the day or freeze too!

Ill make sure I freeze it. Im going to get organic flour with seeds in it. I. Really looking forward to bread making. I do have a bread maker but I want to make it the old fashioned way.

Please share

500g strong white bread flour
7g dried yeast
330g water
10g fine salt

Mix the above together using your hands in a large bowl - it will be rough and 'shaggy', but make sure there are no unmixed-in bits of flour
Cover for 10 mins (I cover with a plate, as that fits my bowl, but a tea towel will do, or cling film)
Uncover and do 10ish stretch and folds (i.e. pick up a corner of the dough, pull it up and over itself. Repeat, working your way around the dough).
Cover for 10 mins
Repeat the bit between the ** 3 more times.
By the end of this process you shoudl have a nice smooth-looking ball of dough.
Leave in bowl, cover and let it rise for about 1.5hrs (until it's at least doubled in size).

Remove from bowl onto a floured surface (top side of dough down). Gently stretch it out and shape it into a loaf (plenty of videos on YouTube). Pop it into a bread tin that you've greased and dusted with flour.

Leave to rise again for another 40-ish minutes

Bake in oven at about 200-degrees. Pop a tin of water in the bottom of the oven to create steam (helps develop the crust, stops it splitting). (I bake mine in a lidded tin as then I get a flat-topped loaf, which is handy for sandwiches and toasties and it looks like it's been bought in a shop!. If you do that, you don't need the tin of water in the oven as the lid creates steam within).

Remove from oven, remove from tin straight away, leave to cool, devour.

Make sure you let it cool before you slice as otherwise it goes gummy.

I make my own sourdough and also classic wholemeal, it’s part of my routine now and I couldn’t go back to shop bought bread.

Homemade bread is far more nourishing, lasts longer and is cheaper.

Get a good bread knife and quality freezer bags, try different recipes.

its worth the effort.

I have a breadmaker too but I seldom use it to bake the bread but I use it all the time to make the dough and rise it, setting usually takes about hour and a half, then I shape it and let it do final rise and bake in the oven. I just hate handling dough and definitely wouldn't hand knead it yeuk! so I find the bread maker perfect for that part as well as controlling the temp so cold or hot kitchen doesn't matter, it's great.