The Best homemade bread recipes to try
Bread recipes for your next picnic, dinner party, or Tuesday evening
Bread. It’s a staple. It’s symbolic. It can pair with a meal or be its base. It’s the most versatile food, and a food you can (and should) make yourself.
How Is Bread Made?
Many people assume baking your own bread is harder than it actually is. But it’s actually quite passive. All you need is time and a few simple ingredients. The basic ingredients are flour, water, sugar, salt, and Zeal grass-fed butter.
Why Is Homemade Bread Better?
Store bought bread is often heavily processed and full of additives, and preservatives. This makes store bought bread, especially white bread, deprived of essential nutrients. Homemade bread is often far healthier by default. And the ancillary benefits are numerous. Your house will smell like bread. Your family and friends will be impressed. You’ll save money. The simple joys behind baking bread are why we saw this activity boom during the pandemic. Traffic to yeast websites shot up over 600% in the early days of the pandemic.
Why Is Grass-Fed Butter Better?
Bread and butter. Not all bread is quality, and neither is all butter. Quality bread deserves quality butter. Processed breads are heavy in additives and lack nutrients. The same goes for processed butter, which is heavily processed and sourced using grain-fed cattle living in cages. Grass-fed butter on the other hand is sourced from outdoor cows grazing on grass, the way it should be. The result is superior taste, quality, and nutrition. Don’t sell your bread short.
Bread Recipes
The best bread for the gluten-sensitive: Sourdough Bread
Sourdough Bread
Sourdough bread is often considered one of the healthiest, most nutritious, and easiest to digest breads. Sourdough is made through a culture (‘fed starter’) of wild yeast and bacteria. This slow fermentation process increases the bioavailability of sourdough vitamins and minerals, as well as a breakdown of the bread's gluten, making it easier to digest for those who are gluten sensitive. It is also a prebiotic. Prebiotics feed healthy bacteria, while probiotics are the healthy bacteria. Sourdough bread is a prebiotic, because prebiotics survive the baking process while probiotics do not.
What You’ll Need:
A large mixing bowl
A fork or wooden spoon
A baking pan or cast iron skillet
What is a sourdough starter? How does sourdough starter work?
The starter is the life source of sourdough. When you make a sourdough starter, you are fermenting flour and water. Flour contains ‘wild yeast’ that becomes activated through the fermentation process. It will take a minimum of 5 days to nurture a good sourdough starter.
Ingredients:
Whole grain unbleached flour
Lukewarm water
What You’ll Need:
A large wide-mouthed mason jar or glass measuring cup with a lid
Step-By-Step Starter Recipe:
Day 1: Use a mason jar or glass measuring cup. For the following steps, its best to use a fork. Mix 1 cup whole grain flour with ½ cup of filtered water. Make sure the flour is always fluffed, spooned, and leveled. The starter should become a thick paste. Place a lid tightly on top. Let it sit at room temperature for 24-48 hours.
Day 2: Wait for signs of bubbling. Discard ½ cup of starter. Add 1 cup of organic bread flour and ½ a cup of water. Mix well. Cover again.
Day 3-5: Repeat the process of ‘feeding’ the starter. Discard ½ cup of starter, add 1 cup of organic bread flour, and ½ a cup of water. Mix well and cover. It is important to understand the signs that your starter is “hungry”; the flour has dissipated and the starter becomes liquidy. Your starter should be fed anywhere from 1-2x a day (at least 12 hours apart).
Day 6 (morning): Your starter should be ready for baking. Feed it one last time in the morning, to bake in the evening. Discard ⅓ a cup of starter. Feed 1 cup of flour and ½ cup of water. Your starter should hopefully double in size (it might be helpful to mark the jar where the starter sits before feeding). Now, give your starter the float test. Place a teaspoon of starter at the top. If it floats, it's ready to bake in the evening. If it doubles in sizes but does not pass the float test, you can still try to bake it. If the starter does neither, continue feeding the starter for a couple more days.
Day 6 (evening): Use ⅓ a cup of starter to make bread. Place the remaining starter in the fridge (if you’d like to bake with it later).
Step 2: Bake your bread
Ingredients:
Well-fed sourdough starter
White bread flour (3 ½ cups)
Rye flour (½ cup)
Salt (2 teaspoons)
Seeds; spices such as chia, fennel, caraway (2 teaspoons)
What You’ll Need:
2 large bowls
1 shaping bowl
1 wooden spoon
A damp kitchen towel
Parchment paper
A dutch oven
A blade or a lame
A butter brush
Step-By-Step Recipe:
In a large bowl, place the white bread flour and rye flour. It should weigh around 520 grams - without including the bowl.
Add salt, seeds, and spices to the flour bowl. You can get creative with seasonings, but for your first loaf, it's best to stick to the basics such as chia and fennel.
Stir down your starter. Add ⅓ cup of starter to 1 ⅝ cup (385 grams) of water. It should look like cloudy water. For this step, it's best to use a fork.
Combine the wet & dry ingredients. Switch to a wooden spoon. Mix for 1 minute. Incorporate all the bread flour. You can also do this with wet hands. It should be thick, shaggy, and hard to mix. Cover with a damp kitchen towel for 15 minutes.
With wet hands, stretch and fold the flour, twice. Watch videos if you are confused. This process helps build the gluten. Do this process twice, 15 minutes apart.
Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel. Let the dough rise overnight for 8-12 hours. The dough is ready if it passes the ‘poke’ test. If you can poke the bread, and the dough rises back up, it's a good sign the dough has risen enough. If it doesn’t pass the poke test, place it in the fridge until it firms up a bit. Stretch and fold again.
Prepare a shaping bowl. Place parchment paper in a high-sided, medium sized bowl. Add some flour on bottom and sides, so bread doesn’t stick.
Stretch and shape the dough one more time. Loosen the dough from the edges of the bowl using a wet spatula. With wet hands, carefully lift dough about 1-2 feet in the air, place it back down gently. You should place it down so the dough folds on top of itself.
Lift the dough into the parchment-lined shaping bowl. Add more seeds if you’d like.
Place the dough in the fridge for 1-3 hours. Preheat your oven to 500F with your Dutch Oven inside for 50-60 minutes.
Grease your blade or lame and score the dough swiftly and deeply at a 45 degree angle, ¾ inches deep. Scoring your bread helps the loaf expand to a maximum, uniform size. It is an art in and of itself with unlimited design potentials. Watch videos if you are confused.
Carefully take the Dutch Oven out of the oven. Gently lift your dough holding the parchment paper and place in the Dutch Oven. Quickly cover the Dutch Oven and place it back in the middle of the oven. Place in the oven for 18-22 minutes. Quickly remove your bread from the oven, remove the lid the bread should be lightly golden with an internal temperature around 200F. Place back in oven, and continue baking for 10-15 minutes until the bread is deeply golden with an internal temperature around 208F.
Pull the bread out of the oven and place it somewhere to cool. Immediately brush the bread with melted, Zeal grass-fed unsalted butter for extra savory taste.
Best bread when short on time: Corn Bread
If the sourdough bread recipe left you intimidated, the cornbread is here to save you. It is one of the easiest breads to make. It’s quick, sweet, and pairs excellently with a ton of meals.
Ingredients:
2-⅓ cups all purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup cornmeal
3 large eggs, room temperature
4-½ cups baking powder
1-⅔ cups Zeal grass-fed whole milk
1 teaspoon salt
What You’ll Need:
A large mixing bowl
A fork or wooden spoon
A baking pan or cast iron skillet
Steps:
Preheat your oven to 400F.
Combine all of your dry ingredients (flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt). Mix well for a couple minutes.
Add your wet ingredients (eggs, milk, butter) into the mixing bowl. Mix well.
Melt some more butter in your baking pan or cast iron skillet. Pour the bread mix into the baking pan or cast iron skillet.
Place your baking pan / cast iron skillet in the oven. Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until you can place a toothpick in the bread and it comes out clean.
Best bread for sandwiches: White Bread
The white bread. It’s classic. It’s American. It’s the perfect sandwich bread. But our experience with white bread is often the store-bought version: highly processed, full of preservatives, and wrapped in plastic. What if I told you white bread tastes even better when made at home?
Ingredients:
4 ½ teaspoons instant yeast
¾ cup + 2 2/8 cup warm water (divided)
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon salt
3 tablespoon Zeal grass-fed unsalted butter (cubed, room temperature)
9-10 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons Zeal grass-fed unsalted butter (melted, for brushing)
Baking spray (for greasing pans)
What You’ll Need:
2 large mixing bowls
A fork or wooden spoon
A baking pan or cast iron skillet
Stand mixer with dough hook attachment
9-inch baking pan
An oven
Step-By-Step Recipe:
In your large mixing bowl, add 4 ½ teaspoons instant yeast. Add ¾ cup of warm water. Stir to dissolve.
Add the 2 2/8 cup warm water, ¼ cup granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon salt, 3 tablespoon Zeal grass-fed unsalted butter, and 5 cups all-purpose flour. Stir to combine.
Place the bowl on the stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can knead the dough by hand. Kneading by hand is intensive and time consuming, however. Add the remaining flour until the dough is soft and tacky, but not sticky. You may not need to use the remaining dough. Continue to knead until a soft ball of dough forms and clears the sides of the bowl, about 7-10 minutes.
Lightly grease another mixing bowl. Turn the bowl over so the dough is completely greased. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap until the dough is doubled in size. This takes around 45 minutes-1 hour. Make sure the dough is in a draft free area.
Turn the dough out and place on a clean, lightly floured surface. Gently press all over the dough to remove any air pockets. Divide the dough in two (this is known as scoring the bread). Work with one piece at a time, and gently pat into a 9x12-inch rectangle. Roll up the rectangle into a very tight cylinder. Pinch to seal the seams and ends. Tuck the roll ends onto the bread and place into a greased 9-inch loaf pan. Cover the loaf loosely, and wait until it has doubled in size. This takes around 30-45 minutes. Make sure it is in a draft-free area.
Preheat the oven to 400F. When the loaf is ready, brush with melted butter and place in oven on the center rack.
Cook the loaf until golden brown. Its internal temperature should be around 195F. This should take around 30-35 minutes. The bread should be rotated halfway through baking.
Remove from the oven and immediately brush with more melted butter. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.