Simple Bread Recipe: Baking a Basic Bread Loaf

Want to create the perfect loaf of bread from scratch? Here’s our lockdown-favorite – a simple bread recipe for beginners.

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Across the world, beating lockdown boredom, following social media trends, brushing up an old skill set or mere learning of new things, baking tops the list. With ingredients that are sure to find in your pantry, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t give this a shot.

Baking is an art, and you may not get things just right in one go. But that’s all the more reason to practice it and perfect it. Once you master this simple bread recipe, you won’t be able to stop and then, you can try many different variations like multi-grain, whole wheat, rye, sourdough – the options are endless.

Simple Bread Recipe for Beginners

Please view a video at the end of the article.

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Ingredients for White Bread Loaf

  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup lukewarm water
  • 1 ½  tsp instant dry yeast
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ cup oil

Preparing the Bread

Once you have all the ingredients ready, let’s begin our simple bread recipe.

Preparing the Dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar and instant dry yeast. To this mixture pour in oil and warm water.
  2. Stir in the mixture first with a spatula and then move onto kneading with your hands. The dough is a bit sticky at this stage.

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Kneading the Dough

  1. Knead the dough with the heel of your palm for 10 – 12 mins. By the time you’ve completed, it should be a smooth dough and slightly tacky to touch.knead-the-white-bread-dough-
  2. Take a small piece of dough and stretch it between your fingers, if it has been kneaded well enough, the dough will stretch out without tearing. If it quickly breaks, you need to keep kneading.

Proofing the Dough

  1. Place the dough in a well oiled bowl, cover it and let it rest for 30-45 mins at room temperature. This is an important step in any simple bread recipe.
  2. Once it has doubled in size, punch out the air and shape your dough.
  3. You can make a round loaf or make a long bread loaf by tucking the sides inside.
  4. Place it in your greased loaf pans and let it rise for another 20 mins. At this stage you can decorate your loaf with a sprinkling of sesame seeds/black seeds.small-loaf-pans-bread-recipe-steps
  5. Brush the crust with milk or water.

Bake the Bread

  1. Meanwhile preheat your oven at 200C.
  2. Bake your bread for 30 mins, until you get a nice golden crust and when tapped it must sound hollow. It is ready to cram down some soft home baked artisan bread.

https://youtu.be/i0p1aZNWcyE

So I hope you found our simple bread recipe helpful. If you tried it, let us know how it turned out in the comments below, and write your own tips & tricks. And do tag us in your bread pics on Instagram @shilpaahujadotcom!

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