Introduction
So are you sick of running to the store every second day you run out of bread? Or do you change your bakery every other day just because you don’t get the right taste of bread at home or the taste of bread you want? Well, things cannot always be the way as you want them to be. Tastes change and foods change! Take a step towards healthier diet and develop techniques to bake bread at home. This will save you from the trouble of running to bakery every other day or changing stores to change your taste. Bread is basically a food that is prepared by cooking dough, which contains flour and water along with some other ingredients according to your taste. Dough is usually baked.
History
It dates back to the early 1900s when fresh baked bread at home started becoming a part of people’s daily diet. The women of this era didn’t merely make their bread, but also were very smart when it came to yeast. They made their own yeast. They made the yeast by boiling potatoes (in grated form) along with little quantities of salt and sugar. Then the women usually added a cup of old yeast so that the ferment could be faster. The resulting yeast mixture was now put in the stove. And so like this, this yeast could be used for 2 to 3 days (that is, before it went sour). The new yeast was made in an interesting way, the women again used to add a cup of old yeast to a newly formed potato salt sugar formula!
Features
We now talk about the features of bread made in home. Simple homemade bread requires only four ingredients that are: Flour, Yeast, Salt and Water. These ingredients are baked in a baking vessel. A baking vessel is a ceramic pot (a heavy one) with a lid on it. The ingredients are mixed in this ratio: 3 cups Flour, ¼ teaspoon Yeast, 1 teaspoon salt and 1.5 cups of water. The mixture is then let to sit for approximately 12 to 20 hours. Sometimes, the mixture is allowed to sit for even 24 hours. It is then took out, and then shaped into a ball of dough. It is then wrapped in a towel for 2 hours, and then baked. The dough ball grows at least twice to its actual size occupying most of the space in bowl. After this is done, the dough ball is then plopped down on a cutting board (powdered with flour). Gently fold the ball few times. After 2 hours, the ball is then put into the ceramic pot and baked for 30 minutes (lid on) and 15minutes (lid off).
Tips and comments
For a pretty, soft crusted bread, melt butter on its top while it is still warm. There might be a possibility that your yeast did not go too good and your bread made at home did not rise according to your expectations but the coating of melted butter will let the people forget all the faults and make your bread baked at home a success!
