How to Make Homemade Bread: Best Bread Tips and Easy Recipe (With Video)

Bread is a staple food across the globe, made by baking a dough made of flour and water. Bread is thought to be one of the earliest prepared foods in existence, and can take on unlimited shapes, flavors, and textures. From country loaves and baguettes, to white bread, yeast bread, and brioche, bread is an indispensable culinary format.

While bread recipes vary, making bread generally requires four ingredients:

• Flour
• Water
• Salt
• Yeast (either active dry yeast, instant yeast, or a levain, also known as a starter)

For a simple bread recipe, active dry yeast is your best. It’s convenient, easy to use, and lasts a long time. But if you’re interested in making bread with a bit more character, like sourdough, consider making your own levain, or yeast starter. While it’s more labor intensive, a levain can take your homemade bread to the next level. Learn more about making your own levain here.

Watch Chef Dominique Ansel demonstrate how to make your own homemade levain.

Homemade bread can be made many ways. Common pieces of bread-making equipment include the following:

• Prep equipment: large mixing bowl, stand mixer with dough hook, knife or bench scraper, bread lame (a double-sided blade used to score the top of a bread loaf prior to baking)
• Cooking vessel: loaf pan, cast iron dutch combination oven, baking sheet or baking dish,
• Cooking method: oven or bread machine

Follow these tips next time you want to take a shot at baking your own bread at home.

1. 1. Use baking flour or bread flour instead of all-purpose. Though not required, the higher protein content in baking flour or bread flour will aid in developing gluten, which gives bread that perfect chewy texture. If you don’t have baking flour, try an all-purpose flour for your first loaf, then switch to baking flour for your second and compare your results.
2. 2. Don’t forget salt. Without sufficient salt, your loaves will be bland and too starchy.
3. 3. Use steam to your advantage. High heat and humidity combine to give bread a shiny, burnished crust. Create steam in your oven by spritzing the baking pan, using a steam injector device, or baking the bread in a Dutch oven to trap and circulate the steam.

Be aware of two important things when you’re baking bread at home.

1. 1. Not letting the bread dough rise long enough. Nothing is worse than a flat, dense loaf of bread—unless, of course, you meant to do that! Giving the dough time to rise allows for better volume, better texture, and more developed flavors.
2. 2. Using hot water instead of lukewarm water. Yeast needs to be alive and kicking in order to make your dough rise. Hot water from your tap can reach temperatures of 120°F or higher, which will kill your yeast. Instead, stick to 70-80°F for your water temperature.

Fresh bread is best stored tightly wrapped in plastic and/or foil in the freezer, and reheated in the oven as needed. If you’d rather not have to deal with constant defrosting, keep bread (still wrapped in plastic and/or foil) at room temperature. Keeping bread in the refrigerator accelerates the staling process.

If your homemade bread has gone stale, don’t throw it out. Here are two uses for stale bread.

• Make homemade breadcrumbs. To make breadcrumbs from stale of fresh bread, slice bread and place directly onto racks of a 250°F oven. Bake until bread is golden brown and inflexible; remove and crumble into small pieces or blitz in a food processor to desired consistency.
• Make homemade croutons. Because it’s drier than fresh bread, stale bread is ideal for crunchy homemade croutons. To make croutons, cut your homemade bread loaf into medium-sized cubes (stale is best, but fresh will also do), toss in a drizzle of oil, and bake at 350°F for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool and store in an airtight container.