How do you make bread from scratch? Also is it really cheaper?

Question

How do you make bread from scratch? Also is it really cheaper?

Answer 1

Two loaves of bread - crisp of crust and tender of crumb.

1 pkg. active dry yeast

1 c. water { 105*F }

2 tbsp. sugar

2 tsp. salt

1/4 c. Crisco

1 c. Warm milk ( 80*F)

5 to 6 c. enriched All purpose flour

(The amount of flour needed will vary due to the humidity )

[Soften yeast in 1/2 cup of the 105*F water , add 1/2 tea spoon sugar and 2 table spoons flour then stir until blended. let sit for at least 10 min.Do this the first thing sit in a warm draft free place by the time you have the other ingredients measured it should be foamy or bubbly ]Then measure measure sugar, salt and Crisco into mixing bowl, pour warm milk over them and stir, mashing Crisco against sides of bowl until broken into small lumps. Add remaining water and cool to lukewarm. Stir in 1 cup flour. Add yeast mixture

{should be bubbly or foamy at this time }add 2 more cups flour and beat with a wooden spoon until batter is smooth and elastic. Stir in 1 1/2 to 2 cups more flour, then, with floured fingers, work in enough additional flour to make a soft dough that does not stick to the fingers.

Turn dough onto lightly floured board and knead for 2 minutes, about 100 kneading strokes. Shape dough into a ball and put it in a bowl rubbed with oil. turn dough to cover all of dough with oil cover with a damp towel and let dough rise until double in bulk,in a warm draft free place about 1 to1 1/2 hours. Punch dough down and turn onto floured board. Cut dough in half and shape each half into a smooth ball. Let rest on work surface covered 10 minuts Shape each ball into a loaf and put into bread pan rubbed with Crisco, seam side down letting one side of loaf lay touching one side of pan Cover pans with a towel {I lightly brush the loafs with canola oil with a soft pastry brush. Instead of the towl. the towel may stick to bread } and let bread rise until the sides of the raised bread reach the top of the pans and the center is nicely rounded above it, about 1 hour.

To bake: Bake loaves at 400 degrees for 25 to 35 minutes, or until golden brown.

When baked: Turn loaves from pans immediately onto a cooling rack to keep crust crisp, just let bread cool, for a more tender crust brush with cooking oil, and let cool.

Touched--- I have given this recipe to several people and they all seem to like it. I hope you like it also.

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be very careful to keep the dough warm while rising. Both rises. I suggest that you turn your oven on and let it warm up slightly then turn it off but leave the light on. Place the dough in the oven covered with a damp towel

for the first rise. For the second rise that is after you place the loaves in the baking pan

It's not good to cover because the cover could stick to loaves. Just try to keep the dough as close to 80*F as you can from the mixing to the time it's ready to bake.

Whitch means you will have to set the paned bread on the counter while you pre heat the oven. Good luck and injoy your home made bread. You can make wholewheat bread with this recipe by using 1 part wholewheat flour and 2 parts white flour.    Jim b

And yes it is much cheaper than Brand name bread with the cost of flour now days it is still a little cheaper than store brand bread.

Happy baking.

Answer 2

It is actually more expensive considering the shelf life/cost of ingredients/labor/fuel for baking. But, if you like crafting artisan breads as a hobby, the cost is irrelevant.  

Answer 3

Yep it is cheaper

1/4 cup milk

5 teaspoons sugar (or 1 1/2 tablespoons)

1 teaspoons salt

5 teaspoons butter (or 1 1/2 tablespoons)

1 package active dry yeast (you can get yeast near the flour at your local grocery store)

2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups flour (get unbleached white for your first attempt)

Corn starch or nonstick cooking spray (just to prevent the bread from sticking to the bowl or pan)

First, you should warm up the bowl - the best way to do that is to just fill it with hot water, then dump out the hot water, leaving the bowl rather warm. Then, mix up the yeast according to the directions on the packet. Usually, it will say something along the lines of “add a cup of warm water to the yeast and stir.” What you’ll end up with is some tan-colored water with some bubbles in it, as shown above. You should stir this until there are no lumps in the yeast.

Melt the butter in the microwave, then add it, the milk, the sugar, and the salt to the yeast liquid and stir it up until everything looks the same (a very light tan liquid). Then add two cups of flour to the mix - don’t add the rest yet. Your bowl should look something like what’s shown above, where I have the spoon on board ready to stir.

Start stirring, and then add the flour about 1/4 cup at a time every minute or so. It will stick to the spoon big time at first - don’t worry about it. Keep stirring and adding flour until the dough is still slightly sticky, but it doesn’t stick to your hands in any significant way. Also, it should largely clean the sides of the bowl, leaving just a thin layer of floury stuff. It’ll look something like the above.

Now comes the fun part: kneading. Take a bit of flour between your hands and then rub them together over the top of an area on the table where you’re going to knead the dough. Do this a few times until there’s an area on the table lightly covered in flour. Then grab the dough ball out of the bowl, slap it down on the table, and start beating on it. Do this for ten minutes. Just take the dough, punch it flat, then fold it back up into a ball again, and repeat several times. I also like to take it in my hands and squeeze and twist it.

When the ten minutes are up, shape it into a ball, then either clean up the bowl you were using before or get out another bowl. Either coat the inside lightly with corn starch or nonstick cooking spray, depending on your preference, then put the ball of dough inside the bowl.

Put a cloth over the bowl and sit it somewhere fairly warm for an hour. If you have a warming area on your stove top, that’s a great place to put it - set the warming area on as low as it will go, as I’m doing in the picture above. This is a good time to clean everything else and put the stuff away, but leave the flour out and the floured area on your table untouched.

It should be roughly double the size that it was before, but don’t sweat it too much if it’s larger or smaller than that, as long as it rose at least some amount. Punch the dough down (three or four good whacks will cause it to shrink back down to normal), then lay the dough out on the floured area and spread it out in a rectangle shape, with one side being roughly the length of the bread pan and the other side being about a bread pan and a half long.

You may need to put a bit more flour on it and on the table to prevent sticking. Then, roll it up! The roll should be roughly the same size as the bread pan

Tuck the ends of the roll underneath, with the “under” side being where the seam is. Then spray the bread pan down with nonstick cooking spray (or coat it with cornmeal) and put the loaf inside of the pan.

Cover that loaf up with the towel, put it back where it was before, and wait another hour. This is a good time to clean everything up, then go do something else fun. The loaf should raise some more:

Put that loaf in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) for thirty minutes. When it’s done, pull it out and immediately remove it from the pan to cool.

Hope this helps! =)

Answer 4

I don't know.  Funny thing, I was kind of heading in that direction...  I thought you might be interested...

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