Whenever I’m stressed, I like to make bread. While it’s true that bread is one of the more difficult things to make, it’s really not that bad once you get the feel for it. It’s incredibly fun to make, smells divine when it’s in the oven, and everyone will love you once they try it (provided you do it right).
I discovered the pleasure of making bread over the summer, and insisted that my mom buy me all the ingredients to keep in my apartment for times of necessity (which is, let’s face it, often). The best part about making bread is the possibility for variation. I’ve made garlic bread, pesto cheese bread, kielbasa cheddar bread, cinnamon sugar bread and chocolate chip swirl bread, and I still can’t pick a favorite.
I first learned how to make the bread on a bread blog (I know it sounds dorky…and well, it is) called The Knead For Bread. They have all kinds of great bread recipes.
Since the actual recipe and instructions are really complicated, I’m going to provide the link rather than typing up all the same stuff, thekneadforbread provides step-by-step picture instructions so that even first time bread chefs can make pesto bread with ease!
There are several tricks with bread that recipes don’t ever tell you, but are absolutely essential for bread making:
- The warm water at the beginning must be the right temperature. Too hot, and it will kill the yeast, too cold and it won’t activate the yeast. The exact temperature is around 140 degrees F. If you don’t have a thermometer, which I don’t, if you stick your finger in the water, you can leave it in for a few seconds without it being too hot, but only a few seconds
- You have to put sugar in the yeast/water/olive oil mix, it activates the yeast.
- Check the expiration date on the yeast before you use it.
- Climate matters! My bread took twice as long to rise in foggy cold San Francisco as it did in sunny warm Newport Beach this summer…and we live in Maine, so give it time to double, even if it takes longer than an hour. A trick I use is to heat up the oven to 150 F and then turn it off, then put the covered bowl in the oven to rise, it’s nice and toasty in there, but don’t let the bread cook!
- Be sure to oil the pan well, and don’t forget the sides
- After the bread comes out of the oven, if you try to take it out of the pan right away, it will fall apart, so wait about 10 minutes or so.
Making Bread is one of my favorite things to do, and I highly encourage anyone to try it. You don’t have to limit yourself to my suggestions of toppings, feel free to experiment with any kind of food you like. Swedish Fish bread, anyone? (Actually, that sounds terrible, don’t try that). A great thing to do with the bread is to make sandwiches with it: pesto cheese bread grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches are my absolute favorite thing to make (and eat). Have fun with baking bread and let me know if you come up with good suggestions for new toppings!