Tips and recipes for making bread.
Add a teaspoon of garlic powder in your flour, you'll have a lightly garlic taste which is great warm or toasted.
When making bread in a cold kitchen, warm everything in oven, including flour and the mixing bowl. Your dough will rise higher.
By Randa from San Marcos, TX
By Alice Ohlert
Dissolve 2 Tbsp. yeast in 4 1/2 cups of really warm water from the tap. Add 4 Tbsp. of sugar to this right away. I buy my yeast from the health food stores refrigerated section. The grocery store yeast is almost always dead and doesn't rise.
Let the water, yeast and sugar work for about 10 minutes until it's starting to foam or bubble a little. Mix in: 4 Tbsp. oil, and 4 tsp of salt. Add 12 cups of white flour (or 6 cups of white and 6 cups of wheat), Knead for about 10 minutes. Add a little flour if it sticks to your fingers when kneading. Let rise for 1/2 hour. Punch down and put in 4 greased loaf pans. Let rise another 1/2 hour. Bake at 325 degrees F for 40 minutes.
I haven't had this recipe fail yet but be sure to get your yeast from a health food store or coop and make sure it's been refrigerated. Good luck!
By Pat
Shape dough in a smooth ball, brush surface with melted butter, cover, and let rise in a warm place till doubled. Punch down divide in two equal parts, and let dough rest for 10 minutes. Shape into smooth balls or "torpedo" shapes for Vienna bread.
Place shaped bread on a cookie sheet covered with shortening (or better yet, sprayed with no-stick cooking spray), and covered with a thin layer of cornmeal. Brush with egg white, sprinkle very liberally with sesame seed and slash tops 1/4 inch deep with a very sharp knife. I usually slash 4 cuts in the torpedo shaped bread, or do a cross hash on the round ones. Let rise till almost doubled.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F with a pan of boiling water in the bottom of the oven.
Bake for 15 minutes at 425 F, then lower temp to 375 F, and bake for 20 minutes more, until a nice golden brown. Thump bread with finger. If it sounds hollow, it is done. Immediately remove to a cooling rack.
By Margie M.
By Kathy in Colorado
I use a bread machine on the dough cycle, then remove the dough for the final rise and bake it on a stone in the oven. My stove is an ancient GE (1945 or so) and the temp dial cannot be trusted so I use an oven thermometer to be sure it is right. I love the machine because it saves a lot of work, but you don't need one to bake really good bread.
Then use cooking spray or Crisco to grease pan. Let raise, punch down twice, then place in pans and raise again. The kitchen must be warm enough to let the bread raise; 75-80 is good. When it;'s doubled put in oven; I use 325 degree F oven, cook a little longer, spray with cooking spray, so crust is soft, get out pans and cool on the counter, or raised sheet like the broiler pan. Good luck!
By Polli from Alabama
This page contains the following solutions.
When slicing bread, I open my oven door, pull out the rack and place the unsliced bread on the rack. I put a tea towel on the open door, under the bread, to catch the crumbs that fall through the rack.
Rather than buying specialised flours, you can use plain, US all purpose, flour and add 2 Tbsp. lemon juice to provide the acidic environment that yeast requires. Don't forget salt, which helps to stretch gluten.
When bread is baking, a small dish of water in the oven will help to keep the crust from getting hard.
Add yeast to flour mixture and add enough water to make it thin enough to beat air into it. Knead several times. Add 2 cup more flour, put in greased dish...
Add 1/2 Tbsp. of gluten per cup of flour when baking bread for a much better texture.
If you make homemade bread, why not try sourdough. You save lots of money on yeast (which can be expensive) and once you get the starter going, it is pretty simple.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
Why does the top of a loaf collapse after baking? The dough rises well, but then collapses.
Your oven may be too hot, you may have beaten too vigorously, or you may have opened the oven door while baking.
You just reminded me that it is time to start baking bread again now that it is getting cooler!! Yeast....here I come!
I have had this happen and it is usually because my oven (or bread machine depending on what I am making) isn't hot enough. So the dough collapses before it gets hot enough to "set" aka keeps its rounded bread top.
There were a few other times this happened and it was because i forgot about the dough it over rose (was over risen) meaning set out on the counter to rise for WAAAAAYYYYY too long because I got too busy doing something else and forgot about it from morning until night.
For me, they always still tasted good...just turned out really wonky looking!
Try adding potato flour or mashed potato to the dough.
This is a page about getting dough to rise. An important step in baking breads, rolls, and other recipes using yeast dough, it letting the dough rise.
