How to Make Homemade Bread

Everyone loves the smell and taste of freshly baked, homemade bread. Making your own bread is a great way to get good, healthy bread into your home with very little cost. Making homemade bread doesn't take a lot of time, and once your family sees how good it is straight from the oven, you may have a hard time going back to store bought loaves.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Flour
• Salt
• Sugar
• Yeast
• Water
• Large bowl
• Fat
• Bread pans
• Mixing spoon

1. Gather all of your ingredients. Basic homemade bread has very few ingredients. You will need yeast, flour, water, salt, sugar and a fat like vegetable oil or butter.

2. Proof your yeast. Making sure your yeast is good is always the first step to making homemade bread. Good yeast will start to foam up after it has been dissolved in the recipe's warm water and has had the sugar added to it.

3. Mix your ingredients. Add all the ingredients except the flour to the yeast mixture. Mix thoroughly and begin to add the flour one cup at a time until the dough is stiff.

4. Knead the bread dough. Turn the bread dough out onto a lightly floured surface, like a large cutting board or a clean counter. Knead the dough using the heels of your hand, folding and then turning it a quarter of a turn after every knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.

5. Let your dough rise. Bread dough should rise until the size of the dough is twice what you started out with. Dough will rise better when covered with a towel and set in a warm place.

6. Punch down the dough. This part is often the most requested job of youngsters. It is not only necessary but fun. Use your fist to "punch" the air out of your dough before forming it into loaves and placing in greased loaf pan. Let the bread dough rise again until doubled in size.

7. Bake your homemade bread. Most homemade bread bakes at about 400 degrees F. Bake your loaves until the tops are golden brown and will sound hollow when tapped with your knuckles.

Tips & Warnings

• Adding a couple teaspoons of ground flax seed can add some much needed Omega-3 fatty acids to your bread.
• With a few small changes, a basic bread dough recipe can be used for more than loaves of bread. Try making cinnamon rolls or even dinner rolls with your homemade bread dough.

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[itlpie]

on 4/25/2008 The artical was really helpful but I can help to notice that there are not the measurments of each ingredient... I believe that is an important part to a recipe... Thanks, Lavinia