Making your own bread


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Last modified on: August 29th 2023



Introduction

Making your own bread

You will find a number of bread recipes on this site, but before you get started, maybe you'd like to know more about the subject, some helpful tips, or how to avoid the usual beginners' pitfalls. If so, this page is for you.

To start with, I suggest you to watch this short video showing baking in a wood-fired bread oven.



Bread: the staff of life

Few foods are more heavily charged with symbolism than bread, and the French language is full of expressions based on it: "Du pain et des jeux" (bread and games, an expression from the Roman Empire), "Manger son pain blanc" (to eat one's bread white, meaning "enjoying a period of prosperity"), "Lui faire passer le goût du pain" (make him lose the taste for bread, meaning "to kill him"), etc. And yet bread is so simple: flour, water, salt, something to make it rise, leaven or yeast and there you have it. This is the basic principal, but from here on it's a little more complicated because: All that to say that if bread-making is quite simple in principle, actually doing it can be rather tricky. I think it's very hard get right first time; it needs perseverance, experience, know how... But once you succeed, what a joy to taste crusty bread, made with your own hands, straight from the oven! This happiness is even greater when shared, and this is when you will find that everyone loves your fresh crusty bread.

What will I need?

As I have already mentioned, bread is made with very few ingredients. Here they are in more detail.

Flour

flour

Flour, at its most basic, is grains of wheat ground to a fine white powder. But in reality, it is rather more complicated than that, so I advise you to look at the page dedicated to the subject for more details.

Water

water

It might seem obvious, but you need to use good water with a neutral flavour, so beware of tap water as it contains too much chlorine. Use filtered water if possible (e.g. Brita system), or spring water. It's indicated in recipes, but do remember to add water at the right temperature.

Salt

salt

The salt you use can be pretty much any type you like, from the simplest (table salt) to the very chic (such as French Guérande salt). This will have little if any effect on the flavour of your bread, though it is always nicer healthier, surely, to eat bread made with coarse greyish sea salt rather than the fine industrial version. Important: for salt there is a strict rule - 18 grams of salt per kilogram of flour, maximum (or half an ounce to 1lb 12oz). These days the trend is towards using less (we generally eat too much salt in our diet), more like 16 grams (half an ounce to 2lbs of flour). Compare this with the 24 grams used in the mid-twentieth century...

Something to make the dough rise

Yeast

yeast

Baker’s yeast, in either fresh or dried form, is a microscopic fungus (saccharomyces cerevisiae) which attacks the sugars in the flour starch and transforms them by fermentation into alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2). The alcohol is driven off when the bread is baked, but the CO2 held by the gluten in the dough will cause the bread to rise.

Leaven

leaven

Leaven also produces fermentation, though more slowly. It adds flavour to the bread as well. This is made from what we call "wild" or "natural" yeasts.

Or both yeast and leaven

We should avoid the mistake of treating these as equal and trying to find an equivalence, as if X ounces of yeast = Y ounces of leaven. Leaven recipes are simply not the same as those based on yeast and we should not compare them. Yeast makes bread rise rapidly but adds little to the flavour. With leaven it’s the other way round: the bread rises more slowly, less dramatically, but there is a phenomenal boost to the flavour.

We can also combine yeast and leaven, with the effects and flavour of both. This makes for a very happy marriage that you will find in lots of the recipes on this site.

The stages

Now you know what goes into bread, how do we make it? Well, it’s a very precise process, involving 12 immutable stages:
  1. Kneading: This is the stage when the ingredients are mixed together and worked to make the dough. This can be sub-divided into three steps:
    1. Mixing: The simple combining of ingredients which usually takes 3 to 4 minutes.
    2. Autolysis: This optional stage consists of mixing just the water and flour and leaving it to rest for at least 30 minutes. This improves the dough structure and helps later with retention of the fermentation gases.
    3. Kneading proper: Now the mixed ingredients are kneaded together (if you have already done the autolysis stage, it is the time to add the salt and yeast) until the dough is fully formed. At this point, the dough takes on its structure, the gluten network develops and it can hold the CO2 during the fermentation that follows and allow the bread to rise.
  2. Resting: This is the first bulk resting or rising phase for the dough, in a tub or bowl, protected from draughts, when the dough begins its fermentation.
  3. Division: After its first rising, the large mass of dough is cut up into pieces of a certain weight, depending on what type of bread is being made. For French baguettes, for example, the pieces weigh 350 g (12 ounces).
  4. Forming: From irregular lumps of dough after weighing, we now shape the bread into something near its final form to await the next stage. This might be a ball or a long loaf.
  5. Relaxation: This is the second brief resting period for the shaped dough. This takes a quarter of an hour, just the time for the dough to relax.
  6. Shaping: Now the loaves are given their final desired shape. The dough, already more or less in the right form, can now be styled as a specific type of bread.
  7. Final proving: The loaves in their finished shape begin their third and final resting and rising stage.
  8. Scarification or slashing: The risen loaves are now ready to go in the oven. Just before, we make cuts in the top with a fine blade. This creates a weakness in the dough, causing attractive gaps to open up during cooking.
  9. Loading the oven: The loaves are arranged on the floor of the hot oven and steam (water vapour) is introduced to produce a golden crust.
  10. Baking: The loaves rise in the oven’s heat and develop their flavour and colour. The golden crust and openings form.
  11. Unloading the oven: We take the loaves out of the oven and put them on a rack to cool.
  12. Cooling: This is the time it takes for the bread, which has come burning hot from the oven, to come down to room temperature ready for eating.

As you can see, there this a certain rigour to this sequence – this is a specific feature of the French bakery tradition and one of the secrets of successful bread-making.

A few tips

Here are a few helpful hints for beginners who would like to embark on the adventure of making their own bread, something I’d strongly encourage you to try.

In praise of home-made bread

I love cooking, as you will have gathered while pottering around this site, but making bread is much more than a bit of amateur baking.
Kneading, working the dough, shaping the loaves, putting them in the oven, baking and taking the finished loaves out are extraordinary moments. I never tire of it, even after all this time (I started in 2004). Even better, I am still learning, with each batch, as I continue baking, from the successes and the mistakes. Gradually my bread is improving; I’m discovering tricks, gestures, new proportions or ingredients. And the pleasure is always fresh.
It’s rather difficult to explain, but there is something magical about making your own bread, which must have something to do with the strong symbolism associated with bread that I mentioned at the top of the page. It’s also because not much can match a golden crusty loaf that’s just come out of the oven!

I’ll finish by letting you into a secret: when you cook, sharing doubles the pleasure, but when you bake bread, it’s even better. Gather with friends around a table, with fresh bread, some little snacks to munch, a few bottles and, believe me, life is worth living…

Conclusion

I hope that what you have read will make you want to have a go. Above all, don’t worry if this seems like a lot to take in all at once, and that you’ll forget something. The recipes on this site remind you of everything you need to know at the right time. Of course, if – in spite of my best efforts – there’s a mistake in a recipe, an error or something that’s not clear, please do let me know. I will be delighted to reply to you.

In short: Just make some bread, you’ll love it!

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Your 6 comments or questions on this page
  • Look at a recipe of bread on this site, all needed informations are in.
    Posted by jh april 8th 2013 at 08:38 (n° 6)
  • Right now i am gonna try and bake bread. i took the dough and covered it with a towel to let it rise etc. what temp. do i cook it on and for how long. help!
    Posted by right now i am trying ti bakle april 7th 2013 at 09:24 (n° 5)
  • Thanks for the tips. I absolutely agree with you that good ingredients and high hydration are very important for making good bread. I am an amateur baker. Started baking since August this year. I bake every weekend and it's rewarding to see the bread I make is getting better and better. Every time I bake, I learn something. I have the exact feeling as you do. Again, thanks for sharing your tips ! It's part of the pleasure in cooking and baking !
    Posted by Cynthia november 14th 2011 at 10:44 (n° 4)
  • Thank you for such quick response...i am encouraged and going to bake one today..i thought as much that the crust will not get brown but its okay.atleast i will give my toddler the best ingredients.
    Posted by s february 20th 2011 at 09:34 (n° 3)
  • I don't know what will happen... But some other peoples tell me that they try it, and it's fine except that the crust is not really golden brown.
    Posted by jh february 19th 2011 at 12:08 (n° 2)
  • I do not have an oven and plan to use the basic bread recipe n put it in the pressure cooker on slow heat like i bake cakes.will that work out ok?
    Posted by s february 19th 2011 at 08:48 (n° 1)
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