Home Baking: Bread Making For Dummies

Recently I made a commitment to try and improve my baking skills. As that bread is something I eat on most days, it seemed like the most logical product to try and attempt making at home. Here is how it went.

I am not a baker. In fact, I have a very bad track record at trying to bake anything. I can make simple oatmeal cookies or a banana loaf but that is as far as it goes. Or used to go anyway. Because I decided to try make bread and make it good!

Normally my biggest issue while cooking, baking or preparing food is the fact that I do not seem to be able to stick to a recipe. For me recipe is more like a general guideline that gives you an idea which ingredients should be included but depending on the availability and taste preferences I tend to mix and match things as I go along. With salads, stews or dishes that do not require too much integration of the various components, this normally works well but baking is something where recipes really come in handy. So this time I decided that I will stick to the recipe, no matter what! That was a nice plan but my free spirit took over eventually.

So the original recipe that I was supposed to use was the following (I found it on Pinterest which I find a really useful network for various blogs and advice):

-       3 cups of all-purpose flour (I used Organic but I am sure regular variety would work just as well)

-       1 tsp of dry active yeast (I am sure that other variety would work as well but the order of mixing the ingredients would probably be different – I mixed my yeast with the other dry ingredients as outlined in the instructions below)

-       1.5 tsp of table salt

-       1.5 cups of lukewarm water (my tap is not too hot so I just used the water from hot water tap – do not use boiling water or water that is too hot because it will kill the yeast and the dough won’t raise)

1.     The recipe suggested that all of the dry ingredients should be mixed well together in a bowl. Water should be added last so that if you need a little bit extra (I ended up using a total of 2 cups) to make the dough sticky then you can add it depending on the need. The dough is supposed to look sticky (although not really liquid) and not dry. It will get bubbly on surface once the yeast starts activating.

2.     Once you have mixed everything well together (I used a wooden spoon), you are supposed to cover the bowl with saran wrap (or cling film as they call it outside North America) and leave it for 12-16 hours for the yeast to ‘raise’ the dough. It should double in size. Make sure to use a bowl that the wrap actually ‘clings’ to because the idea is that you are creating a vacuum environment.

3.     Once you are ready to make the bread, turn the oven on at 400 degrees and place your baking dish inside for pre-heating – leave 20-30 minutes for the oven to get hot. While this is happening, create a surface covered with flour and flip your dough on it (cover your hands with flour before touching the dough). Form a ‘ball’ and let it sit on the surface until the oven is ready to be used. The dough should further raise a little more.

4.     Once ready to go in, flip the dough into a baking dish and make a cross or a couple of stripes on it. Ideally it should then be covered with a solid lid but I did not have one in handy so I just covered it with aluminium foil (you will have to cover it with something because otherwise the top will burn before the bread is ready). Place the dish in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

5.     After 30 minutes has passed, remove the cover and bake for an additional 15-30 minutes – this will let the bread get nice and golden brown (mine took 20 minutes further).

6.     Once the bread is ready, leave it to cool for an hour or so. If you need to cut it earlier, try to cut it with a sharp knife because otherwise you might break it.

So there were a couple of things that I was not quite sure about when following the procedure so I googled for some advice from more experienced bakers. 

My first issue was the fact that the dry yeast came in little sealed sachets and although I could tell that one sachet was by far more that a teaspoon, I decided to pour the whole thing in. After having done so, I consulted with some websites that using too much yeast is not considered good because although it will make the dough ‘raise’ faster, for it to form a nice fluffy texture slow raising is highly preferential. Also, some people apparently find the smell of yeast very unpleasant so there were some comments about ‘over-yeasting’ and the smell of it. I do not really understand it because in bakeries I have always almost liked the mild smell of yeast but maybe I am a bit weird. 

I do have to admit that adding all that yeast made my dough raise really fast. Of course, I did not know this was going to happen so I was actually more concerned about the opposite possibility. I remember when one of my friends in Canada was trying to make bread and her house was very cold so she had some issues getting the dough raise. She was joking about ‘cuddling’ the dough and having the bowl in the middle of the bed while sleeping because it seemed to be the warmest place. Although my house is quite warm (and it is summer in Melbourne!), I decided that the sunniest place indeed is my bed next to a big window. I was thinking of just keeping an eye on it for a while and potentially moving it for the night but little did I know that my dough was ready to be baked well before that. Let’s say, due to all the yeast I added, I could have probably left it in a cold cellar because – my bowl was full of dough in less than an hour from the time I put it aside! Although I read some comments on the internet that should this happen, it would be better to half the dough and put half of it into a freezer for next time and then use the other half by mixing it with more flour and waiting for it to raise again. It sounded pretty messy and the odds of something going wrong with it seemed bigger so I decided to take my chances and make the bread with the super-fast bread dough that I had already created. 

When I flipped the dough over on a big plate covered with flour, it kind of collapsed a little because there was a lot of air in the dough. So first of all the dough ‘ball’ looked quite small but after I had left it for a while, it started raising again and took a promising shape. I read some comments about other people’s experiences of how dough that had too much yeast in it had collapsed in the oven. Beginner’s luck or something else – luckily nothing of that kind happened to my bread. I do have to admit that the texture was a tiny bit thicker and tenser than of that of an ideal fluffy loaf but in general the end result was a nice filling sandwich bread that looked and tasted really good. 

All in all, I am really proud of myself for trying to bake bread. Next time I will try to avoid the mistakes I encountered at my first attempt. I am also thinking of trying the same recipe with whole wheat flour to create a healthier variety. Adding some seeds might be interesting as well. It is amazing how easy making bread at home is and it is really cheap as well.

Happy baking!