Homemade White Bread

Baking bread at home is an art!! Making it at every step gives excitement. This requires patience at every step and it’s simple and easy to bake. Once you learn how to bake bread at home, definitely you will not like to eat the one from shop🍞

I have tried many ways to bake bread at home and the recipe I have shared today gives good result. But be careful about the measurements. Even my kids used to bake with this recipe most times.

Let me explain the steps. We are going to make the yeast to activate, knead the dough and make it rise in three steps before baking it. Kneading the dough well is more important because this step is going to activate the yeast which will give good result. It’s good to knead with hand. Kitchen aid can be used though.

I have used dry yeast for this recipe. I have mentioned the ratio of measurement for instant yeast, dry yeast and fresh yeast in the tips below. Please go through it carefully.

Let us check the recipe for the bread. Please go through the step-by-step process.

INGREDIENTS

Bread flour/ All-purpose flour- 4 cups plus half cup
Warm water- one and three-fourth cup
Melted butter- 2 tbsp plus a little
Dry Yeast- 11 gms.
Salt- 1/2 tsp
Honey- 1 tbsp.

PROCEDURE

First step is to activate the yeast.

Take 1 and three-fourth cup of warm water in a bowl. Warm water is a must for this process. Mix 1 tbsp of honey. Add 11 gms. of dry yeast to it.

Mix everything together with a spoon. Keep it somewhere inbetween 5 to 6 minutes without disturbing. The yeast will start to activate. You could see it rising up and bubbles on the surface.

Meanwhile in those 5 to 6 minutes, take a big bowl. Add 4 cups of bread flour. Mix 1/2 tsp of salt.

Add the yeast activated liquid to it and start mixing the flour with hands or with ladle.

It will come to a sticky consistency where the dough will start to stick to your hands. Now start adding the left half cup flour little by little and start to knead with hand. Use the flour as needed only. This kneading can be done in a big bowl or in a cleaned, greased surface.

I transferred it to the cleaned, greased surface with flour. Knead the dough by adding needed flour little by little to form a ball. Roll till the point that the dough doesn’t stick to the hands.

The dough is ready. It’s not very thick. Just the dough should roll into your hands without sticking to your hands.

Now grease the bowl with little flour and keep the dough inside. Sprinkle some flour on top too.

Just reverse the dough so that the down portion comes to top.

Cover it with a towel and keep it in warm place for 20 minutes. Little more time is also fine.

Now second step of kneading. Add little flour on top and knead it little again with hands so that the dough is not sticky. Rough kneading is not required now.

Same way, cover with a towel and keep it in warm place for 20 minutes or little more.

Grease a bread bin with butter and flour on top. It’s always good to use bread bin for better results.

Keep the kneaded dough in the bin and this is the third step. Cover it with a parchment paper and with a towel on top. Keep it separate for 20 or more minutes in a warm place. I forgot to take the picture of the bin covered with towel. Will do it next time. If you can level the dough perfect, you can. I like this imperfect look.

Preheat the oven to 150 degree celsius for 10 to 15 minutes.

It should rise little above the bread bin. Once the dough rises above the bread bin, it’s ready to go into the preheated oven.

Keep the temperature in 180 degree celsius and bake it for 30 to 35 minutes till the top becomes brown.

Brush with butter on top. Remove it from the bread bin in 5 minutes.

Allow it to cool completely in a cooling rack. Then slice it.

TIPS

1 tsp of instant yeast= 1 and 1/4th tsp of dry yeast= 1/2 block ( 0.6 ounce size) fresh yeast. Use this for yeast ratio when using different types of yeast.
Kneading the dough should be done from outer surface to inside. Always stretch knead from outside to inside to make it like a ball.

Share this:

Like this: