Home-cooked food is often better than anything you can find in a supermarket. There is something extremely satisfying about choosing the individual ingredients and putting them together to produce a beautiful, hearty meal. The same goes for baked goods and pastries. Cakes, muffins, scones, pancakes, pies and the like are all more delicious when made from scratch. And fresh bread just out of the oven is one of life’s little pleasures. Perhaps it’s time you learnt how to make your own.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man

Making your own bread is a good way to save money as you’ll be buying ingredients in bulk and no longer spending your hard earned cash on heavily processed bread from the store. In the current economic climate, you can cut down on ‘luxury’ items such as specialty foods while ensuring that your family has access to wholesome, nutritious home-cooked alternatives.

Most foods tend to lose vitamins and other nutrients as time goes by. This is also true of bread, unless it has been pumped full of additives. This is not the ideal form in which your body can use them. The fresher the food, the better for you.

The basics

A basic bread recipe, according to Jamie Oliver, requires just over two pounds of strong bread flour, just over a pint of lukewarm water, once ounce of fresh yeast, two tablespoons of sugar, one level tablespoon of fine sea salt and some extra flour for dusting.

How simple does that sound? And you can vary the type of flour you use or add whatever ingredients you wish such as nuts and fruits to make wonderful, healthy breads. There are literally hundreds of recipes off- and online.

And if you’re worried about how time consuming this foray into divine domesticity might be, you should not. It’s true that most of us don’t have the time or the energy to bake bread from scratch. That’s why the wondrous breadmaker was invented. So dig the one you received as a wedding present out the back of your pantry and get baking.

There’s no smell quite as welcoming and delicious as a loaf of bread baking in the oven, and most people would agree that great homemade bread is better than anything you could get at the shops. Many people don’t try to make this simple staple because of the idea that it’s easier to just buy it, but once you learn to make bread and discover how quick and easy it is, you’ll be reluctant to ever go back.

What do I need?

A breadmaker will make the job much easier, but it’s still possible to make bread in the oven. Just buy a loaf pan that’s the right size for the loaf you want to make, and you’re all set to start baking. To make bread in an large-sized loaf shape, or to produce two smaller loaves, you’ll need 700g of white bread flour, a level tablespoon of salt, a level tablespoon of yeast, and about 425ml of warm water.

Getting warmed up

What’s celebrity chef Delia Smith’s best advice when it comes to bread? Warm your flour. Do this to dry the flour completely, by placing it in an oven at its lowest temperature setting for about ten minutes. Next, sift it into a bowl with the salt and yeast and make a well in the centre for your water. Pour it all in and get kneading: just use your hands and build up a rhythm of combining the water and flour. Keep folding the outer sections of the mixture into the centre of the bowl.

Rise and shine

When the dough is smooth and springy, it’s ready to rise, so place it in a covered bowl until it’s risen to twice its original size – you’ll probably want to leave it overnight. After that, punch the air out of the dough and bake it in a 230°C oven for about 45 minutes. When it’s done, it’ll sound hollow to the touch, and it’s ready to enjoy. No time to wait for dough to rise? Try beer bread.

Its time to touch up on your bread making skills. Whip out Granny’s dusty bread recipes and get baking. Starting 7 May, it’s National Bread Week. In the UK there are roughly 200 different kinds of bread available at any time according to recipes4us.co.uk. Baking bread is much more rewarding than buying the store bought variety, and all you really need is a good recipe and a little time.

Choices, choices

Photo: Morphy Richards

From flat breads like Venezuelan arepas or Jamaican bammy, Indian chapati and Mexican tortilla, to the high riser breads like good old English cottage loaf and French baguettes and Jewish challah, there’s so much to choose from.

Baking bread

The guardian.co.uk has a great article on how to bake bread like bakers bake bread. And baking bread is cheaper than buying bread from the supermarket, according to realcakes.co.uk: ‘Bread costs a lot more now than it used to before the prices of wheat rose so dramatically. All the more reason then to bake your own bread.’

Perhaps one of the coolest things since sliced bread is the bread making machine. To make bread with one of these is a fuss free process. You just add your ingredients (in the right order), and let this gadget do the rest for you.

Heavenly recipes

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Jamie Oliver has a nice basic bread recipe, good for those just getting started. And then there’s this recipe, hailed by some as the best ever. Either way, bread is bread, and it’s good with just about everything from cheese and jam to soup and sauce. Even toasted in a toaster with melted butter spread on it, with a steaming cup of coffee, some eggs and some bacon, the traditional way, its perfect.

Why not get inspired by Bread Week and bake up a storm? You’ll save money while eating bread fresh from the oven (or bread machine). What could be better?

You can use your breadmaker to bake sourdough breads but the loaf usually lacks the texture and finish that you get in the one of oven baked sourdough bread. You can thus use the breadmaker till the mixing and kneading stage and complete the procedure by baking it in the oven. So if you would also like to impress your family and guests by preparing those delicious recipes using sourdough bread, get one of those amazing breadmakers available in the market these days and get going with your cooking. Some of the best quality breadmakers from the leading brands in the market include the Panasonic SD-255WXC, Kenwood BM450, Morphy Richards Fastbake Bread Maker 48268, Panasonic SD-254WXC and the Morphy Richards Accents 48271.

The Pink Kitchen Appliances include barbecues, food processors, food slicers, breadmakers, juicers, steamers and many other kinds of kitchen appliances as well. The breadmakers come in different powers like 600 and 480 watts. Additionally, these have different loaf capacity of 900 and 1000 gm respectively. The microwaves offered are available in various capacities as per your requirement. Most of the microwave ovens are fitted with a child lock that helps keep the kids away from harms way. The steamers are available with a minute timer of around 60 minutes. Moreover, steamers are available in a wide variety of capacity like 6, 9 and 10 litres respectively.

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