Discover the secrets for making homemade bread!
Making homemade bread is really as difficult as we think? Lets try to follow some good tricks and a few simple rules to make good homemade bread, certainly more genuine, healthier and always fresh!
What are the secrets for making homemade bread?
Surely the ingredients that although few and simple must be of good quality and therefore follow the instructions by the letter. Each one of us is taken by the desire to experiment, but on leavened products there is little to experiment and lots to follow.
The basic ingredients are: flour, yeast, water and salt and then there are others added depending on the type of bread that we want to make do (oil, seeds, walnuts ect). It is better to start with something simple so as to begin experimenting with, such as our beloved traditional loaf. But before we start kneading knead it is necessary to prepare the ingredients all on our work plan, since having our hands in the dough and having to go to the refrigerator or pantry to take other ingredients is quite annoying; therefore it is best to prepare all we need in advance and put them on the table to be in reach with our fingertips. Prepare a fully functional scale preferably digital because in the preparation of leavened dough even a few grams really do make a difference.
The yeast is certainly one of the most important secrets for making homemade bread.
The yeast par excellence is the so-called culture yeast, or sourdough, it is commonly found on the market but if you don’t find it opt for the dried one. The sourdough is a natural yeast that allows to replace, in preparations that require many hours for the growth of the dough (bread, pizza, brioche) all the leavening agents and therefore it is tastier, more genuine and even healthier.
Once put all the ingredients together start to mix, and this passage is fundamental, knead by great master bakers is described almost as a mystic action, meditation, to ensure that your hands will listen to the dough. A part of this beautiful description is necessary if you do not have a kneading machine; knead long and well, the result of the dough must be smooth, sufficiently soft and without lumps.
Once finished the dough and let rise, we than move to the oven. The leavening is a very important step, and the more hours we let the dough rise the more this will be soft and even more digestible but indicatively it should not rest for less than 6/8 hours.
In the oven you can not leave the bread to cook alone without keeping an eye on it, but on the contrary it must be constantly controlled, because although we trust our home oven, cooking will never be equal to the previous and the next, so keep an eye on the timer and even the flap of the oven.
Lets see the ingredients and the process for a traditional bread loaf:
Ingredients
300 gr of flour type “0”
300 gr of flour type Manitoba
200 gr of yeast
100 ml warm water
1 tablespoon olive oil (IF YOU WANT A CONSISTENCY more similar to the focaccia)
1 pinch of salt
Method
- Sift together the two flours making them form a sort of mountain on the work top
- Make a hole in the centre and put the sourdough together with salt, water and oil
- Mix it for a long time in order to obtain a smooth, elastic and homogeneous compound
- Let the dough rest and rise until doubled in volume in a bowl at a temperature of about 20° (the ideal is to put the bowl in the oven with the oven’s light courtesy switched on or next to a radiator if it is winter)
- As soon as the dough is doubled in volume, you can decide the shape to be given to the bread
- Work it out a bit with your hands, to create the classic holes of the bread we need to work the dough by folding the ends towards the centre so as to let air into compound
- Let it rest and rise again for at least two hours in the desired shapes
- Bake in the oven at 200° for 5 minutes, then at 180° for 20 minutes and then at 160°C for half an hour
As you can see the cooking is a little bit elaborate and it is for this reason that you must pay a lot of attention.
Take a look at our tried and tested method: Anti-Diet
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