I’ve always enjoyed baking bread – the satisfaction of kneading the dough at the end of the long day, the beauty of bread rising and proving and the fantastic smell when the bread is baking.
I’ve started to bake bread about 22 years ago when I moved from Prague to London and couldn’t find the type of bread I liked locally. In those days, they were no artisan bakeries to speak of, and supermarkets only sold white or brown toast bread. For somebody who was used to rye sourdough bread, that was quite a shock to the system!
I started to experiment with a few different recipes until I found one I liked and the bread tasted delicious too. After a few more years of practice, we stopped buying food from supermarkets, and I baked my own instead.
I was keen on testing different recipes, and I was pleased to give my bread to friends and neighbours to get feedback. One day somebody suggested to take my bread to a local farmers market, and I was genuinely surprised when we came back with just crumbs in our bread trays. When I was made redundant from my corporate job in 2011, I started Cocoa & Heart to carry on sharing my love for bread by teaching others how to bake bread at home.
More baking recipes you might like to try
- Pineapple Tray Bake >>
- Easy Scones/Biscuits Recipe >>
- Chocolate & Banana Muffins Recipe >>
- Peanut Butter Biscuits >>
The homebaked bread recipe I want to share with you today is a straightforward recipe, which I use all the time. Depending on what you like, you can make this recipe just white bread or wholemeal or mix both types of flour to get 50% wholemeal bread.
I have also adapted this recipe to be used with easy baked yeast, which allows you to prove your bread just once and then you are ready to bake. We are all very busy people, so having an option of one bread rising instead of two, is great.
If you are starting out with your bread baking, I would recommend using bread tin (even 2 pounds cake tin will do). This is so that if you don’t shape your bread quite right, the bread will still hold it’s shaped in the tin, and you’ll end up with a practical shape of sandwich bread.
You can find more recipes (and step by step photos and instructions) in my e-book called ‘The Bread Book’ which is available in a Kindle format on Amazon or as a PDF download on my Cocoa & Heart website.
I hope this inspires you to start baking your own bread and do let me know how you get on in the comments below.
Happy Baking
Magdalena
Easy Homemade Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 500 grams bread flour
- 320 ml water
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 tsp sugar (optional)
- 1 sachet easy bake yeast (7-11 g)
Instructions
- Mix all dry ingredients together.
- Add water and mix
- Turn on a wooden surface and knead for about 10-15 minutes
- Shape & place into a bread tin or a basket
- Leave to prove, until doubled in size
- Bake at 250C for 5-10 minutes, then turn down to 180-200C based on how brown you want your bread do be. Carry on baking for further 20 minutes or so.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack
PIN THIS RECIPE FOR LATER
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