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Baking Real Bread at home

It has been written and said so many times but what beats the smell of fresh Real Bread coming from your oven? 


 Sticky fingers

To seal a deal, some estate agents even recommend that sellers get a loaf on the go for when a prospective buyer visits

Like anything that you haven’t tried before, the idea of baking your own loaf can be daunting, so here we have a few thoughts that might help to build up your confidence.

If you have anything that you think will help to support and encourage others to bake Real Bread at home, please let us know.

See also

Child’s play

Don’t be afraid - though professional Real Bread making requires a lot of skill and experience, baking a basic loaf at home is something that kids can do.

With nothing more than flour, water, yeast, a little salt and a bit of kneading, anyone can turn out a loaf to be proud of. Even without an oven, you can produce a variety of Real Breads on a stove top or in a bread machine.

If for some reason your bread doesn’t turn out right the first time, try not to be too discouraged – go back to the recipe to see if you overlooked something (also see troubleshooting below) and give it another go.  If it’s any consolation, the Real Bread Campaign project officer, now a keen home Real Bread baker, still uses his first ever attempt as a doorstop.

Time

Unlike the factory process, making Real Bread takes time.

That said, most of the time it takes is not your time. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a local bakery or shop that sells Real Bread, baking a loaf could well take less of your time than going out to buy one.

Typically, you might spend twenty minutes mixing and kneading, five or ten minutes shaping your loaf and a few minutes each putting it into and taking it out of the oven: half an hour, top whack. 

The rest of the process (proving and baking) doesn’t require your input at all, leaving you free to do other things – watch telly, hoover the carpet, read a book, fix that thingy like you’ve been meaning to, stop the kids from killing each other or whatever.  If you’ve chosen a long fermentation method, you might even be able to leave it at home for several hours (unlike the kids) while you go off and do something else.

Energy saving

The Energy Saving Trust estimates that baking a loaf of bread in an electric oven uses around 1.6kWh per use and that a gas oven consumes around 1.5kWh per use.

To make the most efficient use of your oven, both in terms of your utility bills and also the cost to the environment, the Real Bread Campaign urges you to bake more than just one loaf at a time.
 

  • If you have a deep freezer, bake as many loaves as you can and then freeze those that you won’t be using within a day or two. 
  • Plan baking and cooking so that your bread making coincides with another oven dishes – e.g. roasts, pies, stews, casseroles, baked spuds, cakes etc. Start cooking those that require higher temperatures or longer cooking at the same time as the bread.  Once your loaf/ves are done, adjust the temperature as necessary for dishes that need a lower temperature.  Even if cooking goes on for a time after your bread is baked, it will still consume less energy than heating the oven up from cold for two separate sessions.
  • If you have one (or can find somebody who will give you theirs) use a bread machine.

Ingredients

Some notes on the basics:
 

Flour

  • The Real Bread Campaign encourages the use of stone ground flours, preferably produced from organic grain that has been grown and milled locally.  For reasons why, please see our FAQs page 
  • Check the ingredients list to make sure the miller has not added any ‘improvers’ or other artificial additives.  This even applies to organic flours.

Yeast
The Real Bread Campaign recommends that you use naturally-occurring yeasts (i.e. a sourdough starter), fresh bakers’ yeast or dried active yeast. Almost every brand of instant (AKA fast acting or easy bake) dried yeast contains artificial additives. Please avoid these.  Click here for more information.

Water
Tap water is fine for domestic baking, though if it is heavily chlorinated in your area, this might slow down the growth of a sourdough starter.

Salt
Table salt is fine, though many brands contain an anti-caking agent. Such an artificial additive would put your loaves outside the Campaign’s definition of Real Bread.  You may prefer to use rock or sea salt, both of which will often contain a variety of minerals in addition to sodium chloride.

Equipment

Some thoughts, with thanks to campaign member Gaye Whitwam.

Mixing bowl
Any bowl will do but it needs to be large enough for the dough to double in size.  A 3 litre bowl is a good size.

Dough scraper
The most useful utensil in bread-making but not easy to buy even in good kitchen shops.  Use the scraper to mix the dough, to cut dough, to lift dough off the worktop, to clean dough out of the bowl, off your hands and work surfaces.

Large plastic bag (e.g. a carrier bag)
Put your bowl of dough inside the bag, making a tent so that the top of the bag doesn’t stick to the dough while it’s proving.  This will keep the dough from drying out and forming a skin. Turn the bag inside out when you have finished to dry out.  You can then fold up and use again and again.

Loaf tins
A deep walled good quality metal tin will give excellent results and a traditionally shaped loaf.  Always use hard butter/margarine to grease the tin.  If you use oil it will sink to the bottom and fry the base of your loaf.

If your loaf doesn’t easily come out of the tin after baking, leave it a few minutes and then try again.  If it still sticks, then use the straight edge of a dough scraper to release the edges.  This is normally where the sticking occurs.  Don’t be tempted to use a knife as you could puncture your loaf and scratch the non-stick coating of the tin.

Baking trays
If your tray is not non-stick, then don’t forget to grease the tray or sprinkle it liberally with flour.  The thicker the tray the better as thin trays buckle in the high heat of the oven.

Thermometer
Useful but not essential for testing the temperature of the water and also the finished dough which, ideally, should be around 27-28C. 

Oven thermometer
Again, not essential but as the thermostats on domestic ovens tend to be inaccurate,  a thermometer is useful to ensure your oven is at the temperature it says it is.

Cooling rack
Always cool your loaf on a rack otherwise the bottom will ‘sweat’ and go soggy.  If you don’t have a cooling rack, use something else that will allow air to circulate under the loaf, like the rack from a grill pan or the shelf from the oven.

Alternatives to the oven

The campaign recognises that not everyone in the UK has an oven, which is one of the reasons that we recognise the value of a bread machine.

In addition, we are inviting people to give us their recipes for Real Breads that can be cooked on the stove top. If you have a stove top recipe that you would like to share, please email us.

Conversions

For absolute accuracy, we use grams in recipes and recommend using electronic scales to weigh all ingredients including liquids.

If you don’t have access to electronic scales, then accurate conventional scales, measuring jug and measuring spoons (i.e. not just the ones you use to eat with) will help you to get the best results.

That said, don’t panic!  Unlike professional baking, the home made loaf is pretty forgiving.

Here are some conversions that you might find useful.

Liquids
1ml = 1g

Salt (fine)
5ml = 6g  (approx)

Dried yeast
5ml = 4.4g (approx)

The following yeast conversions are taken from WildYeast.com

  • 1tsp instant = 3.1g
  • 1tsp active dry = 2.9g
  • 1g instant = 1.25g active dry = 2.5g fresh
  • 1tsp instant = 1.3tsp active dry 
  • 1g active dry = 0.8g instant = 2g fresh
  • 1tsp active dry = 0.75tsp instant 
  • 1g fresh = 0.5g active dry = 0.4g instant

NB – If converting from a recipe that call for fresh or active dried yeast, knowing the amount of fast acting/instant yeast to use instead can be tricky.  Perhaps due to the different chemical and/or enzymic additives that most instant yeasts contain, different brands recommend differing yeast to flour ratios e.g Sainsbury’s - 7g sachet to 750g of white flour; Hovis 7g for 500g white flour.

Online conversion sites
http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_volume_cooking.htm
http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_kitchen.htm

Troubleshooting

Please see the list on our companions page for a number of sites and books that provide a host of tips and information.

We encourage Real Bread Campaign members with questions to visit The Real Baker-e, where one of the hundreds of other members – who include professional and home bakers – just might have answers.

Slowing staling and storing bread

Despite the continued efforts of the industrial baking industry, cosmetics business, genetic engineering fraternity, that song by Cher, King Cnut [sorry anti-revisionists, that’s the current generally accepted way of spelling Canute…] and many others, you can’t turn back time.

When it comes to bread, however, there are ways of slowing staling down a little. Staling is an effect of water loss and starch retrogradation. The latter is a process in which chains of starch molecules in bread move from a flexible gel-like formation when just-baked, back to their stiff, crystalline original state.  

No matter what the artificial additive mongers and marketers say, bread can’t be made to stay fresher longer (as our call for an Honest Crust Act notes - fresh means just baked), there are natural ways of slowing staling.

The wetter the better
The higher the water content of the dough, the longer it will take for the bread to dry out and for the starch molecules to move back to their original state.

A little oil
In small quantities, fat (or oil) stops the water that is attached to the starch molecules from ‘getting away.’ It also slows down the movement of water that is not joined to the starch molecules.  This ‘free’ water also helps to stop the starch chains coming back together in their original state. That said, if you have a lovely wet dough, the oil won’t make all that much difference.

Bake sourdough
Long slow fermentation using a sourdough culture not only produces fantastic flavour, but also one that stales more slowly and inhibits the growth of mould. Make sure the baker does it for real, though – not just throwing some yoghurt, sourdough powder or culture to flavour a loaf made in an hour or two using commercial yeast or baking powder.

Don’t slice until cool
Tempting though bread fresh from the oven is, it’s best if left to cool before slicing. If cut when still warm, bread will lose much more moisture as steam than if left intact. Allowing the bread to cool means more of this water will be kept in the loaf, helping it to stay moister longer.

Keep wrapped
Once completely cool, put the loaf in a container or bag that will reduce evaporation. NB – if you don’t wait until it’s completely cool, or you move the wrapped loaf straight to a much cooler environment condensation can form. This can encourage another enemy of an aging loaf – mould.

Keep cool
As the warmer the environment the faster the evaporation, a hot kitchen isn’t the best place to keep a loaf. If you happen to have an old-fashioned pantry, great, but most of us don’t, so try to find somewhere cooler in the house. Otherwise, find the coolest spot in the kitchen but…

Don’t refrigerate
Starch retrogradation takes place most quickly at fridge temperature, so whilst it might slow down the growth of mould, it will speed staling.

Freeze
This might seem to contradict the last tip, but freezers operate at temperatures below the ‘danger zone’ for starch retrogradation.  Staling will be speeded as the loaf is about to freeze and as it thaws, but these periods of accelerated staling will last only minutes, compared to hours (or days) sitting in a fridge.  It’s best to allow it to defrost at room temperature – thawing in an oven or microwave will cause more moisture to evaporate.

Unless you plan to eat the whole loaf on the day you thaw it, slice before freezing, so you can take it out as needed.

Resuscitation and recycling
A short-term revival technique for stale bread is to dampen a whole loaf very slightly (not too much – nobody likes it soggy) and put in a medium oven until it is warmed all the way through. This won’t reverse the staling, but will make the bread more flexible again for a short while. The time depends on the size and shape of loaf, but will be from about ten minutes for rolls and baguettes, up to maybe twenty-five for a large loaf.

If you believe in a god, then toast is why he/she/it invented staling. Stale Real Bread makes the best toast. And that’s before we even get to bread and butter pudding…

You can find a version of b&bp and other fine ways to recycle stale bread in our recipes section, the Love Food Hate Waste website and may of the books on our companions page.

For more on the science of staling (not to mention of bread and food in general), see McGee on Food & Cooking by Harold McGee.  Andrew Whitley dedicates a chapter of his book Bread Matters to ‘growing old gracefully.’  

Recipes

Real Bread Campaign members can find a growing library on our recipes page, some of which also can be accessed by non-members.

Quite how many books there are on baking or that contain recipes for bread is anyone’s guess.  See our companions page for a list of just a few that include recipes for Real Bread.

A couple of things to bear in mind when following a bread recipe – unless you are making a bread whose character is dependent on sugar and/or fat (e.g. brioche, hot cross buns, lardy cake, certain types of focaccia etc.) you probably can omit them. Sugar will make the yeast work faster and fat can make the finished loaf a bit softer and stay that way for a little longer but often neither is absolutely necessary.

Baking at home for friends and neighbours

One way people are bringing Real Bread back to the hearts of their local communities is the homebakery.

This is exactly what you probably think it is - a bakery run from a home kitchen, garage, shed, or other converted domestic space, baking Real Bread for friends and neighbours. A homebakery can be run as a Community Supported Bakery, or to bake loaves for retail. Most homebakeries are run as a part time venture out of a desire to make a difference, but some move on to larger premises and production, as with The Handmade Bakery, and the E5 Bakehouse in London’s east end.

You can find a wealth of information to help you start a homebakery in Knead to Know: the Real Bread starter.

If you are baking loaves for sale, you might be interested in The Real Bread Loaf Mark.

Homebakeries

Entitled Bread Skills, the 28th December 2009 edition of the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme focussed on the Real Bread Campaign’s friends and members.  This included interviews with The Handmade Bakery, St Mary’s Bakery and the food writer Rose Prince, who is also planning a home baking scheme – the pocket bakery – for kids.

You can find advice regarding setting up a home-based business  at the governmental website Business Link.

If you run your own homebakery, please let us know details and we'll add you to this page.

Here are a few we know so far:

Bethesdabakers  Mick Hartley bakes sourdough loaves 'two days a week in a domestic kitchen in a small terraced house.'

Loaf is a social enterprise run by Tom Baker from his home in Birmingham. As well as running bread making courses, he also operates a Community Supported Bakery from his kitchen and back garden wood-fired oven.

Love Loaves Dragan and Penny run ‘the smallest bakery in the world’ from home and workshops for those interesting in setting up something similar 

The Pocket Bakery - Run by the children of Daily Telegraph writer Rose Prince from their home in order to supplement their pocket money - hence the name. Read more>>

St Mary’s Bakery Richard Dean and Fiona Scimone decided to start baking Real Bread in their small kitchen at home for others in the village, to great success. Contact them on 01252 792810 or stmarysbakery@ymail.com

Virtuous Bread Jane Mason does most of her baking from home, and also runs a bread angels course to teach others how to run a home-based Real bread business.

The Weekend Bakery is a homebakery in Holland, run by Ed & Marieke Dorré.  The couple describe themselves as 'enthusiastic artisan at home bakers', who bake bread, mostly on demand, for our friends, family, neighbours and colleagues, every week, but only during the weekends.  Their website contains lots of useful and inspirational information.

Campaign member Gaye Whitwam is hoping to start a scheme in which families bake at home to make Real Bread accessible to a neighbour or two.  If anyone has advice that Gaye might find useful or lives around Wallington in Surrey (between Croydon and Sutton) or is interested in helping her to develop this, please email Gaye

After the homebakery...

Some bakeries that outgrew their domestic kitchens...

The Handmade Bakery This pioneering Community Supported Bakery in Yorkshire began life in the kitchen of Dan and Johanna McTiernan. In the space of under three years, it  went via the pizza oven of a local Italian restaurant and the back room of a community-owned shop to its current home.

Holtwhites Bakery, Enfield 'We started out as a micro-bakery making artisan bread and cakes from our home each weekend for a small group of friends. After a year, demand had outgrown our kitchen so we made the exciting and life-changing decision to give up our day jobs and open our first shop.'

the e5 bakehouse, Hackney '...began when I returned from a few months travelling at the end of 2009. I booked myself a place on a baking course at the School of Artisan Food which was taught by Carl Shavitz. On returning, a local pizza place agreed I could use their wood fired oven to bake bread when not in use. This wasn't practical for the long term, so I began looking around for a space where I could build my own oven.'

Some tips when starting a home baking business

If you’re considering starting a baking business, you will have considered your home as the workplace. Did you know that over 60% of new businesses in the UK are started from a home base; including baking businesses? Emma Jones, founder of home business website Enterprise Nation, offers a recipe for success.

The 5 basic ingredients to starting a bread-baking business from home
It’s good to do some preparation before starting out so you’ll be ready to start selling and promoting your new business. Here’s some points to bear in mind:

  • Create separate space – this may seem like common sense when starting a baking business but create dedicated space in the house/kitchen so when you’re in that space, you are ‘at work’- bearing in mind the nature of basing a baking business at home, your kitchen must be registered as health and safety checked by your local council. Contact them to arrange an inspection visit via http://www.direct.gov.uk/
  • Keep the neighbours on side – with a baking business smells may come from the house (albeit tantalising ones) and more traffic to your home from deliveries or customers. Be sure therefore to let your neighbours know your plans and minimise the disruption to them. That way you’re more likely to happily run the business from home and the neighbours will happily live alongside you.    
  • Promote – the business is up and running and you’re ready to start promoting and making sales. Consider displaying at farmers markets to get your name out there – and your bread in people’s shopping bags! Contact the environmental health officer at your local council to get approval for displaying at the markets which you can track at http://www.farmersmarkets.net/
  • Leverage technology – there are many low cost tools and applications to help you promote the business and sell your produce. Consider blogging about your bread-making with free tools Blogger or Wordpress or start tweeting  to make customers aware of new offers and baking progress. Sign up on sites such as http://www.tastia.com/ which will bring you to the attention of customers across the UK. 
  • Outsource – focus on what you do best (baking) and outsource the rest. Hand over accounts to an accountant, exchange bread in return for PR help, and check out Virgin Digital Help which essentially acts as outsourced IT support. Doing deals to outsource activity will free up your time to devote to the part of the business you love and the reason you started in the first place!

Emma Jones is founder of http://www.enterprisenation.com/, the home business website and author of ‘Spare Room Start Up – how to start a business from home’. Her next book ‘Working 5 to 9 – how to start a business in your spare time’ will be published in May 2010.

Links

In addition to the Real Bread links on our companions page, here are some other more general baking websites:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/ A US site with not a lot on Real Bread but plenty of interesting and useful info about baking in general
http://www.nationalbakingweek.co.uk/ An annual encouragement to get Britain baking