The Best Homemade Bread

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Learn how to make the easiest and best homemade bread recipe. Once you’ve tried this bread you won’t want to buy store bread again! This recipe makes three loaves. You can easily cut back ingredients for fewer loaves.

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Why homemade bread?

There is something so comforting about the smell of homemade bread filling the air in your home. The fact that you used you hand to craft something good for your family is priceless in itself. Not to mention when trying to live a simple and healthier lifestyle you want to consume better food.

Thats certainly a good place to start anyways. Bread making isn’t an easy process always, but this recipe is pretty straight forward. Perfect for a beginner to make!

Homemade bread is something I would try and try until I got it just right. I knew how much my family likes bread but what we bought at the stores was filled with preservatives and other additives not good for our bodies. I started to look down other avenues and that’s when I learned people used to make their own bread before big corporations came in.

Understanding the Process of Bread Making

Bread making definitely has a process and it must be followed to ensure success. If not and you get inpatient like I did, trust me you won’t be enjoying that loaf of bread. You’ll often hear some say that breadmaking is an art and it is to an extent especially with some more intricate recipes out there.

The recipe I’ll show you today will be super easy for the beginner bread maker to achieve. Perfect for making sandwich bread for the week for your family. Toast or cut up later to toast and season into homemade croutons. (Just some ideas)

Bread dough is meant to rise with yeast in a warm area and for this to happen it needs to be kind of warm in order for the yeast to activate and double in size. This takes a little time so be patient and plan ahead when you plan on making bread.

You can’t rush the process much or else it won’t bake properly. Homemade bread is something worth waiting for.

What Will You Need?

Collect these items for your easy beginner bread recipe:

1. A large mixing bowl
2. measuring cups
3. measuring spoons
4. Stand mixer
5. Three loaf pans
6. A tea towel
7. Your hands!

Ingredients you’ll need are:

1. warm water
2. sugar
3. dry active yeast
4. honey
5. salt
6. melted butter
7. bread flour (all-purpose)

The Process of Making Homemade Bread

Step 1: Grab your bowl and fill with your warm water. Emphasis on “warm” here. If it’s too hot it will kill the yeast, you put in it. This step is important if you want your bread to rise properly. Also, make sure the yeast isn’t expired or the same thing will happen. A good rule of thumb is as warm as you would fix for a baby’s bottle.

Step 2: Add in your yeast and sugar to the warm water. Stir them together so they can dissolve. *IMPORTANT* – when you’re waiting make sure a foam appears on the top of the mixture. This ensures that your yeast is active and able to help bread to rise. If you don’t see foam on the top within about five minutes, you’ll know your yeast isn’t good. Don’t proceed until you see the foam, or you’ll be wasting your time and ingredients.

Step 3: Let the mixture sit for a few minutes so it can properly finish dissolving.

Step 4: Add to the bowl honey, melted butter and salt. Mix together.

Step 5: Add the bread flour, one cup at the time mixing until incorporated well. Stir/mix between each cup.

Step 6: Knead the dough in your stand mixer until everything is well incorporated and the dough doesn’t stick to your hands when you poke it. Add a little more flour until you reach this consistency. Mine is usually 6 1/2 or so cups total. *Option: You can add one cup of whole wheat flour if you want.

Step 7: Knead in mixer or by hand for a few minutes about 3-4 minutes.

Time to Let the Dough Rise

Step 8: Your dough is ready for the first rest. Leave in the mixing bowl and cover with a tea towel and set in a warm place to rise (or double in size). This will take about 45 minutes.

Step 9: Go ahead and grease your loaf pans with some olive oil.

Step 10: Take the dough out of the bowl and onto a lightly floured countertop. Divide into three parts. Form into loaves and place in the oiled pans.

Step 11: Now, time for the second rise. One the loaf pans are filled with your shaped dough, cover with the tea towel and let rise (or double in size). This will only take about an hour.

Step 12: Once the dough has risen, time to bake! Heat oven to 350 degrees and bake bread for 20-25 minutes or until the top of the loaves are golden.

Once it is done baking take it out and let it cool before cutting and you’ve got the most delicious homemade bread.

Helpers in the Kitchen

Don’t forget to get all the kids involved helping you with this. Mine love to help in the kitchen and it’s so important that kids see how and where their food truly comes from. We are here to help make sure they know it isn’t all just instant from a store. How to appreciate good wholesome food again.

Thanks for stopping by The Valley Farmhouse!

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