Delicious and Easy Homemade Bread

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Easy homemade bread doesn't have to mean undecorated bread. Try applying an egg glaze to achieve golden loaves like these.
Easy homemade bread doesn't have to mean undecorated bread. Try applying an egg glaze to achieve golden loaves like these.
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Contrary to traditional bread-making wisdom, you can skip kneading. Instead, try a simple stretch-and-fold technique to strengthen the gluten structure of your dough. First, elongate your dough by stretching it gently between both hands. 
Contrary to traditional bread-making wisdom, you can skip kneading. Instead, try a simple stretch-and-fold technique to strengthen the gluten structure of your dough. First, elongate your dough by stretching it gently between both hands. 
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Next, fold one side to the center.
Next, fold one side to the center.
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Finally, fold the other side to the center, over the top of your first fold. Now, repeat the process. It’s as simple as that. 
Finally, fold the other side to the center, over the top of your first fold. Now, repeat the process. It’s as simple as that. 

I have always found baking homemade bread to be truly simple. I just put flour, water, leaven, and salt together and stir. I often put the water in the bowl directly from the tap and just turn off the tap when I think I have enough. I never measure precisely, and people always love my bread. I honestly think you can’t fail at bread making as long as you pay attention to the dough and don’t try to bake it when it isn’t ready.

Making bread you’re happy with is a matter of both the bread and your expectations. A loaf of bread doesn’t have to look the same every time or match a picture in a book. There is no one pathway to delicious bread.

Here, I’ll share how to prepare easy homemade bread and provide links to recipes for three variations: a crusty white loaf, a deeply flavorful multigrain bread and a lovely sandwich bread. I encourage a largely free-form, no-knead system in which your role as bread baker is like that of improvising jazz musician or nurturing gardener. It is a holistic system that recognizes fermenting bread dough as alive and ever-changing. It is a system that sees each batch of dough as having the potential to produce an infinite range of successful conclusions, such that each recipe is a window into a world of possibilities rather than an end in itself.

The Yeast You Can Do

Yeast is active in dough at any temperature above freezing up to the oven temperature that finally kills it (about 140 degrees Fahrenheit). Like plants, yeasts grow more quickly at warmer temperatures. Just as hothouse vegetables may look beautiful but have little flavor, when dough rises at hothouse temperatures (80 degrees and higher), you get good gas production but not good flavor. Yeast needs time to create good flavors. I suggest using an instant-read thermometer so you can check dough temperature conveniently.

  • Published on Oct 28, 2010
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