The inviting smell of homemade bread should be a good reason to try it yourself at home. A homemade bread offers you healthy nutrients and less additive than the commercially manufactured bread. Making your own homemade bread may take some time; however, the taste and nutritional values make it worthy.
1. Healthy Ingredients
When making your homemade bread, you can choose the healthy ingredients that you want, and you like. You'll be able to select the most noteworthy quality flour, eggs, and dairy. Besides, you can also control the sugar content without worrying about the high fructose syrup that provides empty calories. Unless you include it yourself with margarine. Moreover, homemade bread doesn’t contain trans fats; instead, you'll be able to use healthy unsaturated fats, like olive oil or vegetable oil. A bought bread includes additives and artificial ingredients to increase the flavor and make it bake faster, while a homemade bread does not.
- Flour: You can choose and grind the flour yourself, such as almond flour, oats, chickpeas, and quinoa, and use it directly to prepare your homemade bread or buy high-quality flour.
- Sugar: The amount of sugar is determined as desired or replaced with honey or stevia, which is the natural sugar extracted from the leaves of the plant.
- Fats: you can choose olive oil or vegetal oil that can be used in homemade bread.
- Salt or sodium: Generally, a slice of a bought bread contains 130 mg of salt. However, you can control the salt or even remove it for your homemade bread.
2. Allergen-free
By preparing your homemade bread, you can avoid unwanted ingredients that may cause you some food allergies.
3. A homemade bread; when you like and as you like
If the bakery is not open in your neighborhood, you can remedy this by homemade bread. It is not that complicated, because to make your task easier, you can use a bread machine or simply your oven.
Water, salt, flour, oil, and yeast, and you're ready to make a flavored and fresh bread.
Related: How to make hamburgers at home?
4. When homemade bread rhymes with the economy
Nowadays, the price of bread in bakeries is constantly increasing. If you make a quick calculation of the cost of the ingredients necessary to make bread, and comparing it to the cost of the bread you buy from the baker, you will find that the price of homemade bread is much lower.
By choosing to make your own bread, you save a certain amount of money. And in the long term, this is not negligible. Besides, if you get very large quantities of flour, it will be less expensive.
5. Tips and tricks for homemade bread
5.1 How to use yeast?
The yeast is tricky; however, when you know well how to use it, everything is going to be easy. The trick is that you should not put too hot water; instead, use warm water. (don’t go over 100 degrees).
5.2 How to knead the bread?
Spread some flour on a work surface, then with the palm of your hands, push the dough forward to stretch it, repeat this until the dough takes consistency, and is no longer sticky.
5.3 How to proof the bread dough?
Put the dough in a bowl, cover it and let it rest in warm until the dough doubles the size.
5.4 How to store your homemade bread?
You can store a homemade bread in a plastic bag or in a covered bread box to keep it fresh for longer. You can also freeze your bread by wrapping it in a plastic bag.
Find below our selected homemade bread recipes.
6. Homemade bread recipes
6.1 Basic homemade bread
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of flour.
- 2 tablespoons of yeast.
- A tablespoon of sugar.
- A pinch of salt.
- An amount of warm water for kneading as needed.
Preparation:
Put the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt in a deep bowl.
Gradually add water to the ingredients, and rub well with hands until we get a firm dough.
Cover the dough and leave it for at least two hours.
Divide the dough into medium balls and cover each ball with a small amount of flour.
Then we leave the balls for at least fifteen minutes.
Preheat the oven to a high temperature.
We extend the dough on a hard surface and put it inside a special tray to the oven, then we insert the tray into the oven, specifically on the middle shelf, and leave it for a period of not less than five minutes.
Take the bread out of the oven and serve it.
6.2 The French loaves
Ingredients:
- 2 Tbs of yeast
- 2 cups of warm water
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- 4 to 5 cups of flour
- 1 Teaspoon of cornmeal
- Salt
Preparation:
In a large dish, melt the yeast in warm water. Add sugar and 2 cups of flour. Beat until smooth, add the salt and the remaining flour to get a soft dough.
Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled.
Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide in half and form long loaves.
Place the loaves in a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 450°. Sprinkle loaves with cornmeal. With a sharp knife, make four slashes across the top of each loaf. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown.
6.3 Homemade bread with milk
Ingredients:
- 4 cups of flour.
- A small spoon of salt.
- A tablespoon of instant yeast.
- Half a cup of sugar.
- 1/2 a cup of vegetable oil.
- A cup and a half of lukewarm milk.
Preparation:
Knead the oil, flour, lukewarm milk, yeast, sugar, and salt in a deep dish until getting a smooth dough. Then, put a piece of paper in the oven tray, and spread the dough in the tray, then bake in the hot oven for half an hour.
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Originally published on Live Positively.
