Freshly baked bread, everyone dreams of it. Only nowadays, many just get their bread from the supermarket. It may have a slightly longer shelf life, but this bread contains unnecessary additives and preservatives.
Of course, tastes differ, but this bread is never really very tasty. You therefore fantasise about baking your first bread yourself. But, a bread maker?
You don’t have one. Not to worry, to make bread yourself, you don’t necessarily need a bread maker. What’s on the menu tomorrow morning? Homemade bread!
Home-baked bread a little more effort without a machine
Baking your own bread without a bread maker takes a bit more time and effort. But then, when you’re done, you also just have your own bread that you can enjoy deliciously! In this article, we will show you how to start baking with or without breadmaking mix.
TIP: Want the purest bread possible without unnecessary additives? Then make the dough yourself. Bread baking mix often contains added ingredients such as palm oil that are often not needed at all.
Ingredients for the dough
What exactly do you need for the dough? You have two options. Do you bake loaves with bread mix? Then you can follow the instructions on the package.
You can also make it yourself. In that case, it depends a bit on what kind of bread you are going to make. Are you going for white bread? Brown bread? Wheat bread? Gluten-free bread? It’s all possible. In this example, I’ll give you a recipe for wholemeal bread.
- 500 g wholemeal flour
- 1.5 sachet dry yeast
- 1 tablespoon of table sugar
- 275 millilitres warm water
- 2 teaspoons oil (sunflower or olive)
Note quantities of yeast needed
The quantities needed for your recipe depends on the amount of wheat flour used. Wholemeal wheat flour, for example, is slightly heavier and will need a little more to rise than other recipes.
If you use 500 grams of wheat flour for your recipe, choose 1.5 sachets of yeast for wholemeal bread. For white bread, you will often be fine with 1 sachet.
Freshly baked white bread
If you bake white bread, it’s better to choose patent flour. This will make the bread a bit fluffier. You can also mix different types of wheat flour. As long as you end up with 500 grams.
Which flour if you bake your own bread?
Baking your own bread? Then you need some flour. We list the possibilities for you.
- Firm: wheat flour
- Rye: Rye flour
- Spelt: Spelt
- Light: Patent flour
- Flat: Durum flour
- Tiger: Tiger flour
- Maize: Corn flour
- Sweet: Almond flour
- Coconut: Coconut flour
And gluten-free bread?
Bread that is gluten-free is becoming increasingly popular. If you are going to bake your own fresh bread, you can choose soya flour for the gluten-free variety. This is an excellent type of flour for making tasty bread without gluten.
The difference between the two
I understand the confusion, this question is asked quite often. What are the differences between flour and flour preparation?
It’s actually quite simple: for flour preparation, a whole grain is finely ground, and for flour preparation, the flour is sieved once more, this leaves the well-known white powder.
Home-baked bread fresh yeast or dried yeast?
When baking bread, should you use fresh yeast or dried yeast? Yeast is actually a type of mould.
There are various types of yeast. You can think of brewer’s yeast and wine yeast, but there is also yeast that is used in food. So when baking bread, you can choose fresh yeast or dry ingredient yeast. The yeast is naturally there so that when making bread, the dough doubles or at least grows considerably.
How does yeast grow?
To live, yeast needs sugars. It gets these from flour. Yeast then converts these into carbon dioxide. As you knead bread dough, the gluten in the flour will become active. This creates a formation of balloons that can hold the carbon dioxide, which allows it to grow. This is what happens when you let dough rise.
Which yeasts are there?
There are two types of ist, fresh baker’s yeast and dried yeast or instant yeast. Fresh yeast should be kept in the fridge between three and eight degrees. You can keep a block of fresh baker’s yeast for a fortnight.
You can buy dried or instant yeast in bags in the supermarket. You can keep these in the fridge for up to a year if opened.
Replacing fresh yeast with dry yeast and vice versa
Can you replace fresh yeast with dry and vice versa? The answer to that is yes! When bread recipes call for fresh yeast you can also just use dry yeast, and vice versa the same story. In this case, multiply the weight of dry yeast by three.
How to bake your own bread
Okay how to proceed exactly? I’m going to tell you now. First of all, what do you need for bread recipes without a breadmaker?
- A piece of baking paper or a baking tray
- A batter bowl
- Moist tea towel
- Mixer with dough hooks
- Butter to grease the tin with
Bake away!
The first step is the dried yeast. This makes the bread rise and become nice and fluffy. Take lukewarm water and put it in the batter bowl. Then add sugar and yeast to this. Let this rest for ten minutes.
After ten minutes, add flour, salt and oil to the water. You should then knead this, you can also use a mixer with dough hooks for this. Knead the dough for ten minutes.
Clean the bowl and put the dough back in the bowl as a ball. If necessary, grease the bowl beforehand to make it easier to loosen. You can do this simply with oil. Then it is time for the first rise, cover the bowl and let the dough rise for an hour in a warm place in the house.
Preheat oven and knead dough even smaller
Now preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and place the dough on a countertop. Knead it a little more so that it gets even smaller. The dough should rise for another 15 to 20 minutes.
Bake it in the oven for between 20 to 25 minutes. Every oven is different, so keep a close eye on the baking process. If you tap it and it sounds hollow inside then the bread is ready, remove it from the oven and let it cool.
Enjoy!
Take a slice and put the toppings you like on it. Congratulations, you have just baked yourself a delicious loaf without a bread maker, it wasn’t that hard, was it?