4 Ingredient Stuck at Home Bread {insanely easy bread recipe} (2024)

FAQs

What are the 4 main ingredients in bread? ›

In addition to the four main ingredients used to make bread – flour, salt, yeast and water – there are often small quantities of other ingredients which are added to improve the texture, crumb structure and keeping properties of the bread.

When combined, flour and water create a dough that can be shaped and baked into a variety of delicious treats. Whether you're a professional baker or just starting out, understanding the role of flour and water in your recipes is crucial for creating delicious and satisfying baked goods.

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Pastry flour is lower in protein than all-purpose or bread flour. Without that protein to help give structure, it's not able to rise properly; as soon as any bubbles form they collapse. You'll end up with a dense loaf with an unappealing texture.

Flour: The primary ingredient in bread is flour, which is usually made from wheat. Flour contains proteins, called gluten, that give bread its structure and texture. Water: Water is added to the flour to form a dough, which is then kneaded and shaped into a loaf.

Creating a smooth, pliable dough

Excess water makes a batter, while too little water renders a dough rough, dry and unpliable. Generally speaking, a flour to water ratio of 2:1 achieves a dough of reasonable consistency. So if you have 500g of flour, use about 250 mL of water.

Combine flour and salt in a bowl. Add water, a few tablespoons at a time, mixing well after each addition. Knead dough for 10 minutes. Wrap and let rest for 20 minutes.

When flour is mixed with water, it forms a mixture known as a suspension. Suspensions are generally opaque and forms when the solute (the flour) cannot completely dissolve in the solvent (the water).

There's something magical about the bread you get at your local bakeries - they're always sooo soft and fluffy. Many of these breads, especially packaged ones, are made with a ton of chemical additives such as calcium propionate, amylase, and chlorine dioxide which help keep them soft, light, and fluffy for days.

Does letting bread rise longer make it fluffier? ›

Does Rising Bread Affect Its Texture? For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough.

In a nutshell, if you're buying basic, cheap sandwich bread, it's probably cheaper than you can make it at home. But if you compare two loaves similar to what you could make at home — one made with high-quality ingredients as opposed to one made with lesser quality ingredients — home baking becomes much cheaper.

Adding Moisture to the Mix. The addition of moisture, both on the surface of the dough and in the oven itself, prolongs the time that the crust takes to solidify. This, in turn, allows the dough to expand until the yeast has done its job without causing the crust to split and crack open at weak points.

Adding dry milk powder to your bread dough will help your loaf rise higher. In addition, the loaf will stay soft and hold moisture longer which again means it will last longer. It also helps brown the crust. If you want a lighter fluffier bread loaf just add 2 Tbsp of dry milk to the flour per loaf of your bread.

Charred crumbs of a flatbread made by Natufian hunter-gatherers from wild wheat, wild barley and plant roots between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago have been found at the archaeological site of Shubayqa 1 in the Black Desert in Jordan, predating the earliest known making of bread from cultivated wheat by thousands of ...

7.1. 2 The basic ingredients in a yeast dough are: flour, liquid, salt, sugar, fat, eggs and yeast.