The Easiest Bread Recipe You'll Ever Bake (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a soft and fluffy bread? ›

Lubricate With Oil. One of the easiest ways our bakers follow to make bread soft and fluffy is by using 1-2 tablespoons of lubricant/fats such as vegetable oil to wet the ingredients.

Charred crumbs of a flatbread made by Natufian hunter-gatherers from wild wheat, wild barley and plant roots between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago have been found at the archaeological site of Shubayqa 1 in the Black Desert in Jordan, predating the earliest known making of bread from cultivated wheat by thousands of ...

In a nutshell, if you're buying basic, cheap sandwich bread, it's probably cheaper than you can make it at home. But if you compare two loaves similar to what you could make at home — one made with high-quality ingredients as opposed to one made with lesser quality ingredients — home baking becomes much cheaper.

Sugar: When yeast is mixed with sugar it consumes the sugar and produces carbon dioxide gas, which causes the bread dough to rise and become light and airy. Instant Yeast: Instant dry yeast can be added directly to the flour mixture without needing to be activated first.

The spongy texture and moist flavor that oil creates can be a boon to certain recipes. Not to mention oil is cheaper and easier to work with. Butter will always provide superior flavor and that melt-in-your-mouth texture. In many recipes, combining the two gives the best of both worlds.

Wetting the dough causes the surface to steam. Covering it traps the moisture. This partnership stops the bread from drying out on the surface in the hot air of the oven and forming a premature crust. Your bread rises more and produces a richer colour, becoming glossy on the surface.

Bread was baked in small domed clay ovens, or tabun. Archaeologists have excavated ancient ovens which were usually made by encircling clay coils or from re-used pottery jars. The oven was heated on the interior using dung for fuel; flat breads were baked against the interior side walls.

What truly makes bread? ›

The process of making bread can be broken down at a very simple level into four steps. First, the ingredients are mixed; the four basic ingredients used to make bread are flour, water, yeast, and salt. Combining these creates a dough, which is then kneaded before being left to rise, before being baked.

As long ago as 2,000 BC the Egyptians knew how to make fermented bread. The practice was to use a little old dough, or leaven, to “start” the new dough. These two doughs were mixed together and allowed to ferment (rise) for some hours before baking.

That said, most homemade breads are likely healthier than store-bought breads, which are often high in sugar and preservatives. One benefit of making your own bread is that you can control the ingredients. For example, you can use whole wheat flour instead of white flour, or add healthy toppings like nuts and seeds.

Baker says the best place to store bread is at room temperature. "Homemade bread stored at room temperature will have the best quality if used within three to five days," she says. "Commercially-prepared bread can be used within five to seven days.

Homemade bread contains no chemicals, artificial additives, preservatives, or enzymes. These are often used in store-bought bread to make them stay fresher for longer and enhance the taste.

All it takes is a small amount of dough enhancer per loaf to create a much lighter and fluffier result. Using a dough enhancer like Vital Wheat Gluten works to improve the texture and elasticity of the dough and elongate the strands of gluten. Doing so allows more room for the gas in the dough to develop and rise.

Commercial bakeries use two types of ingredients to slow spoilage — emulsifiers and enzymes. Emulsifiers keep bread from going stale by preventing oil and water from separating.

Once reactivated, yeast begins feeding on the sugars in flour, and releases the carbon dioxide that makes bread rise (although at a much slower rate than baking powder or soda). Yeast also adds many of the distinctive flavors and aromas we associate with bread.

Fluffy bread is the product of CO₂ and steam getting caught in pockets of gluten, which causes the dough to expand. This expansion is what makes the bread so soft and light. To make your dough, first you'll need to combine ingredients with yeast.