You can save time by buying a hot loaf of bread on the way home, but, here, saving time on health and a slim figure is not a good idea. Try spending a month with fresh home-made bread, choosing one of the simplest step-by-step recipes for making it, and you don’t want to go to the bakery after it.
Step-by-step recipes for homemade bread - basic technological principles
In order for the dough to always succeed, it is important to remember once and for all those biochemical processes that occur with it during the preparation process, to determine those moments when you can change something in the technology of making homemade bread, and which moments in the recipe must be performed strictly in steps, like indicated.
To begin with, the dough does not like rush. It is thoroughly kneaded. This is done so that the gluten of the flour dissolves well in the liquid part and acquires elasticity.
Protein "threads", interconnected, hold gas bubbles formed by yeast during the processing of sugar and carbohydrates contained in flour - the dough rises due to these bubbles.
The second important point: fermentation is an enzymatic process. Yeast is added to the dough not only for bubble formation! But most housewives forget about it, try to save time by choosing the fastest recipe for making homemade bread or other pastries. In a well-fermented test, useful acids are formed, converted from carbohydrates, which are the main problem in the fight against excess calories and kilograms.
Do not rush the dough. Try to make sourdough bread - it is healthier and tastier.
The classic recipe for homemade bread: step by step cooking
Ingredients:
Wheat flour (1 grade) 900 g
Fast yeast 11 g
Granulated Sugar 40 g
Water 450-500 ml
Vegetable oil 60 g
Salt 7 g
Cooking:
It is very simple to make soft and lush homemade bread according to the classic recipe, if you follow step-by-step instructions.
1. Warm water to room temperature and dissolve yeast and sugar in it, add a glass of flour and mix well. Put the dough in a warm place.
The optimum temperature for yeast is 20-25 ° C. The mixture should be doubled, and bubbles will appear on its surface. The time it takes to dissolve the yeast depends on its freshness and the temperature of the water and air in the room. Sugar and flour must be added to the dough, because yeast needs nutrition. To make the mass increase faster in volume, add a little oil: the oil film will hold the gas bubbles - a product of the processing of yeast, due to which the rise will occur faster. But do not get carried away, because the oil film will also block the access of oxygen, which is also necessary for yeast, like all living organisms.
2. Sift the flour and gradually add it to the liquid, slowly kneading the dough. At this stage, it is very important to monitor the density of the dough and the even distribution of flour. When it stops spreading, put it on the table, sprinkled with flour, and continue to knead. Ready dough for bread should be elastic, smooth, without lumps and easily behind hands.
Flour, depending on a number of objective factors, has a different moisture content, so you need to adjust its amount when added to the dough. It is important to focus not on the amount indicated in the recipe, but on tactile sensations, since it is extremely difficult to determine the moisture content of flour at a home stop.
The density of the dough for homemade bread should be very high. It will become softer and more magnificent after double proofing, but immediately after kneading it should look like dough for dumplings.
3. Put the dough back into a bowl, cover with a towel or cling film to prevent it from weathering, and place it in a warm place for 1-2 hours. At the end of the time, when the dough is significantly increased in size, do a warm-up. So carbon dioxide, which has accumulated during this time, will come out of it. Cover the dough again and let stand. The dough will double again.
4. You can start the formation of loaves. The total weight of the dough for homemade bread, according to the recipe, will be approximately 1.4 kg. The average weight of one loaf is 400-450 g. That is, if you divide 1.4 kg by 450 g (weight of finished bread), you get 3 loaves. There is still 100 g of dough - divide this piece into 3 parts too. That is, the weight of each loaf in raw form will be 483 g.
Keep in mind that after baking, the mass of bread will decrease by 10-15%, due to evaporation of moisture. The weight of the finished bread with the specified tab will be 400-422 g, with a normal baking mode. It is not advisable to form larger loaves, as this will increase the baking time, and it will be difficult to ensure uniformity of baking: a large loaf may remain unbaked inside and burn from above.
5. For hearth bread, form loaves on a table sprinkled with flour, rolling them into dense balls; for baked bread, the dough may be less dense, since it is baked in molds, and therefore maintains the desired shape, without blurring when baking.
6. Shape the dough into a ball and place on a baking sheet. Leave to stand for 30-40 minutes, covering with a napkin (not a film!)
7. Before planting in the oven, semi-finished products can be greased with vegetable oil to give the bread a beautiful appearance. If desired, you can decorate the surface with notches in the form of a mesh: for this, use a very thin blade. The depth of cuts should be at least 1.5 cm.
8. Preheat the oven to 180 ° C. The baking time at this temperature is approximately 25-30 minutes for a baked bread, for a hearth - 18-20 minutes. You can check the readiness with a match - pierce the bread in the middle, if it is ready, it will remain dry.
Before forming a light crust on the surface of the loaves, do not open the oven so that the dough does not settle due to a sharp change in temperature.
9. Remove the prepared bread from the oven and grease it again with vegetable oil so that it has a shiny appearance. Do not put it in polyethylene and do not wrap it until it cools down - put on a wooden surface and cover with a towel for 5-10 minutes.
Step-by-step recipe for home-made wheat-rye bread
In the old days, rye bread was considered not worthy of the nobles and it was baked only by peasants, but today the situation has changed dramatically. The useful properties of rye flour are appreciated, and if you make bread at home, following a step-by-step recipe, it will be even more useful and tastier.
Ingredients:
Rye flour 700 g
Wheat flour 350 g
Dark beer 400 ml
Purified water 200 ml
Brown sugar 4 tbsp. l
Salt 2 tbsp. l
Gluten free 2 tbsp. l
Raisins 150 g
Caraway
Cooking
1. Take care of the preparation of the starter culture. Pour 3 teaspoons of rye flour into a liter jar, heat 30 ml of water to 35 ° C, add to the flour, and mix well. Cover the jar with cling film or a lid and leave it to stand on the table for a day. Make a few holes in the cover or do not close too tightly to allow air to enter. After a day, again add 40 g of flour and water to the jar, and let stand another one as much. The next day, mix already 70 g of flour and 70 ml of water and also leave to wander on the table. After this time, rearrange the jar in the refrigerator and add two teaspoons of flour and 20 ml of water for three days. To save time, you can use the ready-made sourdough, but it will not give the bread such a rich aroma and taste as homemade.
2. Rinse the raisins, fill with hot water and leave to get wet.
3. Mix the remaining amount of rye flour with wheat flour and gluten, sift through a sieve into a large bowl and make a deepening in the middle. When using gluten, always adhere to clear proportions (for 3 cups flour you need 15 ml of gluten). Lack or excess of gluten in the dough can ruin the bread.
4. Add 1.5 cups of sourdough, sugar, salt and beer to the flour mixture. Add raisins, drain the water, knead the dough until smooth. Make sure that there are no lumps left in it, and the flour interferes completely. When the dough becomes thick, transfer it from a bowl to a table - it will be much easier to work with it. In the process of kneading, grease hands and work surface with oil.
Before kneading, warm the starter and beer to room temperature to make the dough better.
5. Return the dough to a bowl and cover with a film or towel. Put it in a warm place overnight.
6. When it rises, give it an oval shape and sprinkle with caraway seeds. Lubricate the pan with oil, using a brush or napkin, and transfer the loaf to it. Let the dough stand for half an hour.
7. Warm the oven to 190-200 ° C, and bake bread for about 45 minutes. The readiness of baking can be checked by puncturing it with a match - if it is not wet, the bread is ready. Transfer hot bread to a wire rack or wooden surface.
Step-by-step recipes for homemade bread - useful tips and tricks
Homemade bread is tastier and healthier. To always have a fresh and hot bun for breakfast, of course, you can use a modern bread machine. But it is not in vain that from time immemorial a special attitude has developed towards bread - you have to knead the dough with your hands to feel it. It will turn out well - not immediately, but the skill will definitely come.
In the evening, prepare the yeast sourdough, in a deep bowl, so that during the night it "does not run away" to the table. To do this, pour warm water into a bowl, put sugar, yeast and a quarter of the flour required by prescription. Cover the container and leave it on the table for the night. In 7-8 hours, the yeast processes all the flour and sugar. In the morning, add the rest of the flour, knead the dough, and, to speed up the lifting process, move it closer to the heaters. Here you can even use a multivar or a bread machine, setting the temperature at 22 ° C.
The first secret is that the dough prepared in this way will rise very quickly while breakfast is being prepared, and after 45-50 minutes a fresh fragrant loaf will lie on the table - over time this skill will work out automatically, and cooking homemade bread will not seem complicated - each step of a proven recipe will be verified step by step!
The second secret: yeast, having fermented well during the night, form useful enzymes in the sourdough that the body needs. Indeed, flour products harm the figure only because the flour contains a large amount of carbohydrates. Quick dough preparation prevents yeast from processing carbohydrates and forming enzymes. Sour bread is very useful.
