Everything you need to know about bread with the Home Bread Encyclopedia

For a while now I’ve been making my own bread. Of course, like many people I started with a bread machine, which quickly ended up banished to the back of a cupboard. A bread machine isn’t ideal for getting a good crusty loaf like from the bakery — it turns out more of a sandwich loaf than a proper bakery bread. So you get bored of it fast, or at least I did.

Then I discovered the Dutch oven bread recipe, which I’ve adapted to my taste — and since then I haven’t bought a single loaf. But this book will let me understand things better and go further.

Here’s the recipe — feel free to tweak it to your liking:

In my Thermomix I put 100 grams of water, then add 10–15 grams of fresh baker’s yeast. I mix for two minutes so the yeast dissolves in the water.

Then I add 1 kilo of flour — T110 for me.

I cover the flour with 600 grams of water. Finally I add about 15 to 20 grams of salt and knead until I get a ball that no longer sticks to the bowl.

I leave this ball to rise in a bowl covered with a cloth for an hour.

Then I put the bowl in the fridge for 24 hours, covered with cling film.

Once the dough has rested, I put it in the Dutch oven, carefully lining the bottom with baking paper so the bread doesn’t stick. You can of course reuse it, and I’d encourage you to.

Close the pot and put it in the oven at 40°C for an hour, then 45 minutes at 240°C; you can take the bread out of the pot and keep browning the top in the oven for a few more minutes if you like.

As you can see, making bread with just a Dutch oven and a regular oven is relatively simple. The prep time is short if you’re lucky enough to have a stand mixer to knead the dough for you.

You’ll have noticed I use baker’s yeast — and yes, that’s precisely why (among other reasons) I bought this encyclopedia: to learn how to make my own sourdough starter.

With the Home Bread Encyclopedia you’ll learn all sorts of things about bread — why sourdough over yeast, why knead and how, and so on.

Bread is a staple of our diet, yet it’s getting harder and harder to find good bread — fresh, made that day, with a proper sourdough dough. So take back control of how it’s made, and above all: no supermarket bread if you don’t want to end up eating who knows what 🤮.