Everyone Can be a Baker

Whenever I tell people I bake my own bread & haven’t bought bread since March of this year, people are usually in shock. My initial reaction is always, “Well yea, it is super easy”. Then the conversation always leads to them telling me, they either don’t have the patients or “that sounds like a lot of work”. Without being too cliche… Anyone can make their own bread!

    The most basic bread has just a few ingredients; yeast, water, salt, and flour. The process of forming the dough and letting it rise, is what takes the most time. 99% of the bread I make will take two to four hours of rising! The rising process is really called fermentation. This is just when all these ingredients come together and form a gas (carbon dioxide), and the only way for that gas to escape is to push the dough up. So when I say I am baking bread, about three quarters of the time I am standing around or cleaning something. Mutli-tasking at its best!

    The one piece of advice I would pass along, would be ‘Practice, Practice, Practice’.  The more you bake, the better you will get at it… just like anything else. Your first loaf of bread will probably come out terrible. The ratio of flour to liquid is key. And if you end up putting in too much flour, the dough will not rise. Not enough flour will create a sticky dough that will be hard to handle, and will not rise correctly. Finding that ‘Sweet Spot’ comes with practice. With as many loaves of bread I have baked, I still make mistakes. So be patient and keep working at it!

    This is why I believe EVERYONE can be a bread maker! If you are motivated to make something delicious, just keep at it and your end result will be amazing!

Enjoy and Bon Appétit!