Homemade White Bread Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Homemade White Bread Recipe

How to use strong bread flour and a few other ingredients to make two loaves of homemade white bread from scratch. This manual method uses a period of kneading and three periods of rising before baking the dough.

Course Breakfast, Lunch

Cuisine American, British

Keyword bread

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 45

Rising time 3

Total Time 4 15

Servings large slices

Calories 134kcal

Author Tanya Anderson

Cost $7

Equipment

large bowl for mixing
measuring cups or digital kitchen scale
measuring spoons (stainless steel)
bread dough scraper optional
plastic bag
baking tin
cloth kitchen towel

Ingredients

8 cups strong white flour 1 kg
2.5 cups lukewarm water 600 ml
3.5 tsp Salt 20 g
3.25 tsp dried bread yeast 10 g
1 Tbsp olive oil (light colored or pomace)

Instructions

Measure the dry ingredients into a large bowl and stir until well incorporated.
Pour in the water and oil and mix with a spoon and/or your hand until all the ingredients form a sticky dough.
Turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. Your kitchen countertop is ideal.
Fill the bowl with hot water and let it stand for a few minutes. The idea is that the warmth will be absorbed by the bowl and help the yeast to get a jump-start on life when the dough is put back inside.
Begin kneading the dough. You'll knead it for about ten minutes and if you'd like to understand how to knead bread, there's a video further below.
After ten minutes of kneading, the dough should have changed texture and have an even and satiny elasticity. If it doesn't seem this way, keep kneading since improper kneading will result in a dense and unpalatable loaf.
Once that even and elastic texture is achieved, form the dough into a ball.
Empty the water from the bowl and grease the inside of the bowl with about a teaspoon of olive oil. Place the ball of dough inside.
Drizzle a small amount of oil onto the dough and rub it on the surface with your hands. This helps stop the dough from drying out.
Place a damp towel over the bowl and put it in a warm place to rise. Rising occurs when the yeast comes to life and begins producing gases. The dough should double in size before the next step, which will take about an hour.
Once the dough has risen, take it out of the bowl and punch it down flat with your fingertips, form it back into a ball again, and put it back into the bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel.
Allow the dough to rise again, doubling in size. Then again take it out and punch it down until you have all the air bubbles out.
Cut the flattened dough down the middle - the two pieces will become separate loaves. Select one and place it on a lightly floured surface and roll it up tightly like you would a swiss roll, and pinch the seams in so it doesn't fall apart.
Using your fingertips, press the roll down until it's fairly flat. Then fold one end to the middle of the dough and then fold the other end to the other side.
Now press it all down flat again. The point of all this rolling and pressing is to create a structure for an unsupported loaf to rise and take a final shape. Without it, your result will be a bread puddle.
Take one long side and roll it tightly towards the other long end. Pinch in the seam and tuck in the sides, then rub flour all over the loaf and set it on a floured board. Repeat the process with the second piece of dough.
These formed loaves still need to rise one last time, which is called proving, so put them on a large board or cutting board and place them in a warm part of the house. Cover the loaves with a large plastic bag to keep them from drying out.
Proving will take at least half an hour and possibly another full hour, depending on how warm the dough is. When you feel the dough has nearly doubled in size again, it's ready to be baked.
It's now that you want to pre-heat your oven and the pan you plan on baking on to the highest setting possible. You should also place a dripping pan or jelly pan at the bottom of your oven at this time -- something that can shallowly hold about a cup of water.
Before you start moving the dough, make sure to get some boiling water prepared. Either on the stovetop or in an electric kettle. You'll need one cup of scalding hot water at the exact time you put the bread into the oven.
When the hot water is ready, take the pre-heated pan out of the oven and gently move your loaves to it. Take a sharp knife and score the tops of the loaves around a half-inch deep. Scoring not only looks nice but allows the bread to rise even higher once it's in the oven.
Pour the water into the pan you've placed at the bottom of the oven and quickly put the loaves into the oven. Close the oven up and allow the bread to bake at this temperature for ten minutes. The steam from the water helps to create a moist environment for the last rise the bread makes before the crust hardens.
After ten minutes, turn the oven down to 350°F (180°C or 160°C convection oven) and allow the bread to bake for a further 35 minutes. When you take it out, the bread will be golden brown.
Cool on a counter before cutting and eating. Homemade white bread is best consumed on the day its made, but day old white bread is perfect for making croutons and French toast.

Video

Nutrition