This No-Fail Recipe Makes Homemade Bread Blissfully Simple (2024)

FAQs

What are the 4 main ingredients in bread? ›

In addition to the four main ingredients used to make bread – flour, salt, yeast and water – there are often small quantities of other ingredients which are added to improve the texture, crumb structure and keeping properties of the bread.

Not every bread should look wet on the inside, but a quality bread will have a slightly glossy finish on the inside. In addition, it will spring back when you press your finger into it. If a bread bakery claims to make a good flavored bread, you should be able to smell that flavor before you even bite into a piece.

In this episode of the Stella Culinary School Podcast we kick off our bread baking lecture series with a lesson on the four ingredients needed to make bread. We discuss the science behind flour, water, yeast and salt and how it will affect your overall bread dough recipe.

Try a thermometer. For the best bread, controlling the temperature of the dough is just as important as proper ingredient measurements or good scoring. A dough that is too cold won't ferment at a rate that produces good volume, strength, or flavor.

Some alternative ingredients can help give your bread added moisture. One such ingredient is milk, which has a high-fat content and can add a delightfully creamy flavor when baking. Additionally, adding mashed potatoes or cooked grains can help keep the crumb soft and tender for days after baking.

Food for Yeast: Yeast is a type of fungus that feeds on sugar to grow and produce carbon dioxide gas, which helps the bread dough rise. Adding sugar to the dough provides the yeast with the food it needs to thrive.

If you're looking to ramp up the taste of your favorite bread recipe, we recommend adding a bit of fat. A fat like butter, olive oil or coconut oil in small quantities will help your bread achieve a higher rise and it will also boost its flavor by tenfold.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

While bread flour is the best option, it can sometimes be used if you don't have bread flour. “Check the protein content,” advises Chef Jürgen, since it can vary from brand to brand, and an all-purpose flour that contains protein on the higher end of the range, 12 to 13 percent, will produce a better outcome.

All-purpose flour can also make great bread — many professional bakers use and love it in their loaves. It can be particularly good for Irish soda bread or other quick bread recipes that use baking soda instead of fermentation to leaven the dough and are meant to have a denser crumb.

How many minutes does it take to bake bread? ›

Bake: Preheat oven to 350 F. Bake bread for about 30-33 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Give the top of a loaf a gentle tap; it should sound hollow. Invert the loaves onto a wire cooling rack. Brush the tops with butter and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

Kneading Dough: Kneading bread dough is an important process to developing a gluten structure which strengthens the bread. It also creates a more even crumb for the final product and improves the flavor of the bread.

Temperature is a very important factor in bread baking. In fact, it is probably the most important factor behind scaling your ingredients accurately. The pace at which a dough moves from step to step through a recipe is completely dependent on what the dough temperature is.

Fiber and total carbohydrates: “The simplest way to spot a good bread is to look at total carbohydrates and fiber,” says Los Angeles–based nutritionist Ilana Muhlstein.