Bread Making Tips

Bread is a very important ingredient in the diet of millions of individuals on a day by day basis. However, there are as numerous sorts of bread as there are peoples' eating it and most countries have more than one type of bread too. In it's most fundamental form, bread is made by cooking a dough of flour and water. However, it seldom rests there except in children's scout camps.



The flour can be manufactured from almost anything that can be dried and pulverized, so in Europe and America, flour is most usually manufactured from wheat, rye or corn, whereas in India it is frequently manufactured from gram and in Thailand it can be made from rice but there are numerous other sorts of flour as well, besides all the possible mixtures obtained by combining the assorted flours.



Often, whole grains or rough-ground material will get added into fine flour to improve texture, taste, roughage or / and aesthetics. Also, in the same manner, occasionally the dough will be rolled in seeds such as sesame, poppy or other kinds of crop like rolled oats. The second ingredient is water, yet not always. You can use water, milk or even beer or yoghurt or a mixture of some of them.



Then there are additives. No, not the E-numbers or chemicals such as flavour-enhancers or preservatives, they are completely uncalled for, unless you are using poor quality ingredients or you would like the loaf to have a long shelf life. No, I am talking about natural additives. Yeast is the first additive. It makes the bread increase in volume and so makes it light. Bread without yeast is more like cake. Sugar, honey or molasses is added to help the yeast increase in size.



Salt is the first real additive. Salt is added to inhibit the action of the yeast and as a flavour-enhancer, but you could add celery salt (garlic or any other salt) instead or table salt. However, you do not actually need it if you do not use yeast. After that, the world is your oyster, you can put what you like.



Some people add an egg to give the bread more body or fruit such as raisins. Or you can add bananas instead or as well. Nuts are good in home baked bread as well and so are dried plums and apricots. I used to like to add a handful of rolled oats for additional fibre.



A little oil (olive or other) or butter will help the bread's elasticity and it will also store longer as well, not that that was ever an issue in our household. Herbs and garlic is nice in homemade bread but so is ginger or onions. In fact, one of the best breads I ever baked was done with the left overs from my Sunday luncheon. I could not eat it yet it was not enough to put in the fridge so I put it in the bread mixture.



I put in French green beans, a little potato, some cabbage, a bit of chicken, kidney beans and the gravy - only a little of |each. It was the best bread I ever baked, and I have spent the last ten years attempting to replicate the loaf in vain, because I did not write down exactly what I did.



Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several subjects, and is currently involved with healthy pizza recipes. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our site at Vegetarian Sandwich