How to bake bread in the oven at home

Now I don’t want to go to the store once again, but without fresh bread it becomes somehow sad. But you can also bake an amazing loaf yourself – without any bread machine, in an ordinary oven.

Homemade bread rules

• Choose high-quality flour: it determines how the dough will rise, whether you get a crispy crust. It is better if it is durum wheat flour.

• Monitor the quality of the yeast. Dry yeast in an open pack deteriorates quickly and may stop working. Raw yeast needs to be stored in the refrigerator, but even there it will not live long: it has a very limited shelf life.

• Make sure to sift the flour. The bread needs to breathe, and with the help of sifting, you saturate it with oxygen.

• The basic bread recipe contains no eggs or butter. These ingredients are only needed for butter dough.

• There is no need to knead the dough to the point of fanaticism: the main thing is to make sure that the flour absorbs the liquid, the dough becomes homogeneous, and during the fermentation process it will reach perfection.

Rye wheat bread

Ingredients: 2 glasses of wheat flour, a glass of rye flour, 280 ml of warm water, 2 tsp. dry yeast, 1 tbsp. l. sugar, flour for work.

Cooking: mix and sift both types of flour, mix with yeast. We make a depression in the center, add salt and sugar along the edges. We make a depression in the center, pour water and knead the dough. Transfer to a floured surface, knead the dough until smooth. Put in a bowl greased with vegetable oil, cover with cling film or a damp towel. We leave to come up in a warm place. When the dough increases in volume, we form a loaf or buns, put on a baking sheet, make small notches on top with a sharp knife, cover again and leave to come up for about half an hour. We bake in an oven preheated to 190 degrees. The time depends on the size of the loaf or buns: it will take 40-50 minutes for whole bread, 25-30 minutes for small buns.

Japanese sourdough milk bread

This is not a leaven in its classical sense: it does not need to be cooked for three days, “fed” and allowed to ripen in the warmth. It needs to be prepared ahead of time, for example, in the evening, and allowed to stand in the refrigerator. And in the morning you can already bake bread on it.

Ingredients: 540 g flour, 2 eggs (beat them lightly with a fork), 50 g butter, 60 ml milk, 60 ml heavy cream, 80 g sugar, a pinch of salt, 10 g milk powder or cream, 11 g dry yeast. For starter culture: 1/3 cup flour (about 50 g), 250 ml water (or half with milk).

Cooking: first we make the leaven. Pour the flour into a small saucepan, fill it with water and put on a small fire. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Cover the resulting paste with a lid and put it in the refrigerator for several hours.

When the mixture “ripens”, prepare the dough. The best way to do this is with a mixer. We mix starter culture, milk, cream, eggs. Sift flour, mix with yeast and milk powder. Pour this mixture over wet, add salt and sugar on top and mix with a mixer at low speed. When the mass becomes more or less homogeneous, add soft butter cut into small pieces. Stir at a slight increase in speed. When the dough stops sticking, place it on the table, knead it lightly and leave it in a greased bowl to fit: it should double in size.

When the dough is good, divide it into three portions. Roll each into a cake, then bend the edges to the center, lay with the seam down and roll out slightly. Roll each roll off the short edge. Put the rolls in a mold close to each other, let them come up to double the dough. Then brush with a beaten egg on top and bake in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Rustic bread with cheese and herbs

Ingredients: 300 grams of spinach, a stalk of leeks, a glass of grated Parmesan (or other hard cheese), 150 grams of feta cheese (crumbled), 2 cups of flour, 2 tsp. spoons of baking powder, a little thyme and a quarter cup of your favorite herbs (basil, dill), ½ tsp each. black pepper and sweet paprika, a glass of milk, 2 tbsp. l. butter.

Cooking: preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Pour the spinach with slightly salted boiling water and immediately with ice water, fold it back to glass the water, then chop finely. Melt the butter in a frying pan, add thinly chopped leeks, sauté until soft, add spinach and cook until the liquid evaporates. We cool the mixture.

Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl, add salt, pepper, paprika, finely chopped herbs and both types of cheese. Stir and slowly pour in milk to make a soft dough.

Knead the dough on the table until smooth. Form bread, rolls or braids and bake until tender for about 40 minutes.