How to Make Bread at Home

Baking homemade bread can be challenging to even the most experienced home cooks. It’s not like making a stew or grilling up a steak. There is a lot of technique involved and lots of ways to mess up. Below is a recipe for making a basic 4-ingredient bread with step-by-step instructions that should take most of the mystery out of bread making.

If you want to learn even more about the art of great bread making, check out my web site for my article on How To Make Bread. It goes in depth on ingredients, equipment, bread making techniques including mixing and kneading dough. It’s a great primer for anyone interested learning how to make bread at home.

Basic Bread Recipe

3/4 oz. active dried yeast
Heavy pinch of sweetener consisting of sugar, spoonful of honey or dark corn syrup (just to kick-start the yeast)
2 cups warm water (about 115 degrees, F, is good)
approximately 2 pounds bread flour
1 TBSP salt
A little extra flour for dusting

Mix the sweetener with the warm water until dissolved. Add the yeast, and stir again, until dissolved.

Combine the salt with most of the flour - leave out about 6 ounces or so. In the bowl of a large capacity heavy duty stand mixer (or in a bowl or even on the table for you purists), mix the water into 1 pound of the salted flour until well combined. Mix well to start incorporating air. This step will assist in the final rise you will get. Add the rest of the salted flour, and mix again until the flour is incorporated.

At this point, turn out the dough if you’re doing it by hand. Knead in as much of the remaining flour as is necessary to achieve a smooth, non-sticky, not to wet or dry dough. Knead by hand or with the dough hook until the dough is very smooth and elastic and passes the windowpane test.

Fermentation Stage

Shape your dough into a smooth ball and let it rest, covered, in a warm place in a greased bowl until it has doubled in bulk. (Turn the dough in the bowl so all sides are greased, and let it rise smooth side up). When you poke your finger into the side of the dough and the dough doesn’t spring back at all, you’ll know you’re there.

How long it will take depends on the temperature of the room, the temperature of the dough, the barometric pressure outside - lots of factors. A reasonable rule of thumb is give or take about 1 1/2 hours. You can do this step on the countertop or in any draft-free place. On top of the fridge is good, since heat rises, it’s probably a little warmer up there.

I’ve also done this step in a cold oven with the oven light on. Remember, though, the longer you can draw this out, the better the bread will be. If you have the time, a longer time at a cooler temperature is fantastic, say 3 hours at 68 degrees F.

Benching Stage

Now, roll the dough out of the bowl onto a surface very lightly dusted with flour and press out all the gasses. Now, decide whether you are making one jumbo loaf, two loaves (either in pans or just rounds) or rolls. Divide the dough accordingly, or leave it in one piece. Form each piece (again, it’s up to you how many) into a round, cover with a clean, lint free towel or even some plastic wrap, and let rest for a few minutes.

Shaping Stage

Next, shape each piece however you want. If you are making a round loaf, round your dough on the table. You’ve probably seen bakers do this on TV and this is how to do it: take your ball of dough and place it on the table in front of you. Cup your hands around the dough on either side of the dough ball, with the pinky side of your hands touching the table. Without lifting your hands, begin to firmly push the ball in circles on the table.

You can do this slowly or quickly. The end result will be the same, although you will get faster with practice. The friction between the bottom of the dough and the table should cause your dough ball to smooth and tighten. This will allow for a more even rise and a prettier loaf. If you’re not getting any traction on the table, smear a bit of water on the table - just enough to make it a little damp, but not wet.

If you’re making a pan loaf, press out your dough and stretch it into a rough rectangle whose long sides are as long as your pan. Roll the dough up fairly tightly jelly-roll style, tuck the end under and place they cylinder of dough, seam side down, into your pan. Shape your rolls however you want.

Proofing Stage

Put your rolls or loaves on or in whatever you’ll use to bake them - baking stone, cookie sheet, loaf pan. Cover them with a clean, lint free towel or a piece of plastic wrap and let them double again. Since the yeast have been happily multiplying in your dough all this time, it will take about half the time it took during the fermentation period.

Preheat your oven during the proofing time to 375 degrees, F.

Ready to Bake

When you’re ready to bake, if you want to, you can slash the tops of your loaves with a very sharp knife. This is generally done for appearances, although it can boost the final rise in the oven (oven spring - the impressive rise you get during the first few minutes in the oven, before the crust sets), and help to keep the crust from stretching and tearing in the oven.

Your bread is done when it is a lovely golden brown color, when it sounds hollow when you tap it on the bottom, and when the internal temperature has reached 200-210 degrees, F. This could take as little as 10-15 minutes for small rolls and upwards of half an hour for large loaves. When you can smell the bread and it is starting to look done, start checking.

Once the bread is out of the oven, let it cool on a rack - if you have panned the bread, take it out of the pan to avoid having a soggy loaf. Cool to room temperature, then store in a paper bag at room temperature. Since this bread contains no preservatives, keeping it around for more than a day can be an issue. If you know you won’t plow through all of it in a day, slice the loaves once they are cool, and store them in freezer bags in the freezer. That way, you can pop out a piece or two to make a sandwich. It defrosts in no time.

Be sure to check out my web site for How To Make Bread.

My wife makes great banana bread whenever a bunch of bananas get too ripe for anything else but this week she and my youngest daughter baked the most delicious zucchini bread I have ever tasted. As I mentioned in my previous blog, my daughters are really getting into cooking so we encourage them to help as much as they like. It’s great time spent together and offers them some new skills and responsibilities.

The bread is moist, sweet and full of flavor and the addition of raisins and chopped walnuts give every bite a unique taste. With the over abundance of zucchini around from friend,s gardens and the farmers co-op we belong to, this is the perfect recipe to help you use up some of those zuccs.

I’m reading this recipe off an old, yellowed and stained index card that my wife keeps in a Ziploc bag in a kitchen drawer. She told me the recipe came from one of her college roommates so I’m not sure where it actually came from but it is worth giving a try.

This recipe makes 2 loaves of bread.

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 ½ cups sugar
3 medium sized zucchini, grated & will drained (about 2 cups)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups sifted flour
¼ teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoons salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts

How to Make Zucchini Bread at Home

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat the eggs lightly. Stir in oil, sugar, zucchini and vanilla.

Sift the dry ingredients together and stir into the egg mixture until well blended.
Stir in the raisins and walnuts.

Pour the batter into 2 well greased loaf pans and bake for 1 hour.

Remove the pans from the oven and let the bread cool in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes.

Remove the bread from the pans and let cool completely. If you try to slice it when it’s hot, it most likely will fall apart.

Great toasted in the morning with a little cream cheese.

How to Make Incredible Cheese Biscuits

I am excited to tell you about my latest NoviceToPro Interview with Chef Jenni Field, a graduate from the prestigious Orlando Culinary Academy’s Le Cordon Bleu program. It is a great interview and a must read if you are thinking of going to culinary school especially if you are over the age of 30.

Jenni started culinary arts school after a 16-year career as a teacher and avid amateur baker. The interview gets into why she changed careers, how she decided what culinary school to attend, what it was like plus Jenni talks about what qualities someone needs to enter the restaurant industry. Do check it out here.

I asked Chef Jenni for a signature recipe and she offer this one for Cheese Biscuits. Here is what she said:

“I make these for bread service at the restaurant every day.  People clamor for them in a most undignified manner!  This recipe doubles and quadruples with no problem (I make a batch with 32 cups of flour), so it’s a good recipe for a crowd”

Cheese Biscuits
 
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon mustard powder
pinch of cayenne pepper (to taste)
4 oz. cold butter, cubed
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup buttermilk
6 oz. grated cheese (we use gruyere and parmesan. Cheddar works very well, also)
Several grinds of black pepper

Heavily flour a smooth work surface.  (Seriously. You shouldn’t even be able to see the table under the flour).  Have your rolling pin, a bench scraper and grated cheese ready to go.

Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl.  Rub in butter with your fingers until the butter pieces are about the size of large peas. 

Pour in the cream and buttermilk and toss lightly with your hand, using your hand to fold the ingredients together like you’d use a spatula.  The dough will be a shaggy mess. Some will still just be plain flour and some will be kind of wet.  Doesn’t matter.  Overcome your trepidation and dump it all out on the floured surface.
Sprinkle a little flour on top of the shaggy mess of dough and pat it into a rectangle that’s about 1/2 inch thick. 

Take 1 oz. of the grated cheese and sprinkle it on half of the rectangle.  Use your bench scraper to help you fold the non-sprinkled half over onto the sprinkled half.  Try and get the edges fairly even. 

Turn the dough a quarter-turn.  You might need your bench scraper for this, too. 

Lightly roll this folded, still messy mass of dough and cheese until it is again about 1/2 inch thick.  Keep it as rectangular as you can. 

Sprinkle another ounce of cheese on half, fold, turn and roll again.  Repeat this process with the remaining 4 ounces of cheese.  It will look like all the cheese won’t fit, but carry on.  I promise it will.  If some falls out, just put it back in. 

With each fold, you are creating tons of layers of dough and cheese.  In that sense, it’s kind of like a puff pastry.  Also, the dough will become much easier to manage.  It might, in fact, become kind of hard to roll, making you have to push down pretty hard and grit your teeth.  That’s okay.  Just keep going. 

Once all your cheese is in (it will sort of magically disappear into the dough), square up the sides of your rectangle again, then cut in squares of whatever size you prefer.  With this size batch, you’ll probably get about 7-8 larger biscuits or about 15 mini guys. 

Use your bench scraper for this part, too–it is a useful tool.  (For the most beautiful baked biscuits, make sure all four sides of your biscuits are cut sides. 

Don’t bake one with a fold on one side.  It will still taste good, it just will rise all funny because the layers on one side are all still attached). 

You can bake the biscuits immediately, but they seem to like to be frozen for awhile first–they rise up nice and straight when the fat has had a chance to firm up again. 

At any rate, when you’re ready to bake, brush the tops with buttermilk, grind on a bit of black pepper, and bake off at 375 degrees, F for 7 minutes.  Turn the pan and bake for about 6-8 more minutes.  (This baking time is for a commercial convection oven.  Your baking time might be different). 

When they are done, they will be tall and golden brown and lovely.  Resist eating for as long as possible (we can only go for about 14 seconds at the restaurant) and then eat. 

They are great with butter, bacon, or for a truly decadent treat, smear on some really good raspberry jam.  Hooray for the cheese biscuits!