Roll up your sleeves - you're making bread. From scratch. By hand. No mixing machines. It's always a little daunting the first time you make bread yourself, but once you actually take the time to do it, you'll find that it's a lot easier than it looks. Plus, nothing is better than fresh baked, homemade bread. It's warm, rich smell will fill your house. It's flavor will far surpass anything you can buy at the store. Anyone that tastes it will marvel at your culinary skills. Plus, you can brag you did it all by hand. You're going to do an awesome job.
Pro Tip: For the best results, when making bread always use a digital food scale to measure your flour by weight. Using a cup (or volume) measure is actually wildly inaccurate. Depending on how densely packed it is, the actual amount of flour you measure with a cup can vary by 10-20%. Great bread depends on having the right balance of flour and water (aka hydration) so that gluten forms and you get stretchy, elastic dough. At first I didn't see what the big deal was, but then I started measuring by weight and suddenly my bread recipes started to work consistently every time and without fail. Plus, if you use a digital scale, you're just dumping flour from the bag into a bowl until you hit the right number.
If you won't use a scale for science, use a scale because it's the lazy, foolproof way to get great bread every single time without having to count how many cups you've already measured. Honestly, that's why I use one.
Print
