Up until about a year ago, I NEVER had made any homemade breads at all. The only reason? I was scared of the yeast! I never knew if I would kill it, mix the dough too much, how long does it have to rise? What happens if it doesn’t rise? I was full of doubt.
Until….one day, I made my first loaf. And you know what? It’s not hard at all and actually, besides the rising of the dough, not much work either!!
And, the beauty is: 3 ingredients.
This batch made 2 loaves of bread.
1 1/2 TB. yeast
1 1/2 TB. kosher salt
6 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 cups of warm water.
In the mixing bowl, I put the 3 cups of warm water and added the yeast, and stirred it with a spoon. I let that rest for about 5 minutes. Then I added the salt and a little at a time I added the flour.
I have a dough hook on my mixer, so using that I mixed the bread for about 5 minutes. Take the dough hook off, and remove any dough from it and place a towel over the bowl for 2 hours.
The process:
Here’s what it looked like after mixing for 5 minutes:
After a few hours, it looked like this:
Look at how big it got! It almost came out of the bowl!!
I took half of the dough, and put it in a bread loaf pan coated with cooking spray, and let it rest for another 20 minutes.
This is what the loaf pan I used looked like:
Bake for about 30 minutes and its browned on top. Let cool and remove from pan.
And slice it and slather with butter!
For my next loaf, I made that one Asiago cheese flavored! I did the same thing with the other loaf, place it in the bread pan, add the shredded cheese on top, waited about 20 minutes and baked that one as well.
The lighting in my kitchen stinks at night, but this is what that loaf looked like:
The best part about making your own bread, is a). It’s cheap! b). It tastes so good! c). You are in charge of the ingredients, there is nothing artificial added d). Your family will ask you to make it again.
I’m planning on making an egg sammy for breakfast tomorrow. 2 thin slices, toasted, with a Pam fried egg, and a slice of ham! I can’t wait.
So, I am issuing you a challenge. If you’ve never made bread before, are you going to try it soon??
Congrats! Your bread is gorgeous! I have not baked bread yet and would like to try soon, although I think I will wait a little while longer due to my super huge baking disaster this weekend.
I’ve made bread and rolls before! Also banana bread a lot. I agree- the ones w/ yeast are usually the most work, but just to let them rise. You’ll also know pretty quickly if you killed the yeast.
My grandma had a bread maker growing up and lived only about a mile from us. She made breads non-stop so we usually had hers, she made all kinds of sweet and savory flavors. But bread from a breadmaker is a weird shape. I like your loaves better! Oh and we have the same pan – I think it’s Calaphan or something w/ a C?
wow! i think i just might try my hand at this now! but… what if my mixer doesn’t have a dough hook? what exactly does the dough hook look like? maybe i do have one and just don’t know it. ha!
Mmm your breads look so good!!! I have made homemade bread before, but I fully intend to make it more often. The only reason I don’t make it more is that we can never finish a whole loaf before it’s stale, but my husband recently said that he’d like to have it for his sandwiches, so I will be making some soon!!!
So does my bread machine count? Because I use that often!
does making my own hamburger buns count???
I make my own buns/bread ALL the time..with a bread machine!
I’ve been wanting to try and make some homemade bread. It’s another one of my cooking/baking fears. I’m just going to have to take the plunge and try it! π
You make it sound so easy! I gave up on yeast breads years ago when I kept killing the yeast…I should try again, though. And now I am craving a piece of warm, buttery bread!!!
I have made this bread every day for over a year, we love it.
Whoa! Bread making is seriously scary. Never tried it because of all the reasons you stated.
DONT FALL OVER but we do this once a week on shabbat!
The child and I bake our own challah.
well done it looks perfect!
It’s one of my goals to start making more homemade bread. This one looks so easy I am definitely running out of excuses!
I have plenty of no good excuses, one being that I have no standing mixer, like a KitchenAid. I suppose I could knead to my hearts content.
I’m just scared.
Great bread, I too started baking bread not long ago, and I just fell in love with the process, I also build a wood burning oven and bake with sourdough starters. I write about it on my blog in more details.