Above: a fresh, hot out of the oven, deliciously smelling loaf of bread with onions, caraway seeds and poppy. It was made, in concession to my family’s preferences, with instant yeast and half whole wheat, half white flour.
Bread is one of the most rewarding and cost-effective things you can make in your own kitchen – anything you bake yourself will save you money, too, vs. any store-bought bread of comparative quality. Far from being time-consuming, it simply requires some planning ahead. Here is the total time it takes to produce a beautiful loaf like the one I made yesterday afternoon:
- Mix dough – 15 minutes, more or less, including kneading.
- Wait for dough to rise: this varies according to weather, flour used, and yeast (instant or sourdough starter). Can be anything between 1 and 24 hours, but during this time you don’t need to babysit your bread – you just put the dough in a warm place to rise and go on doing other things.
- Punch dough down after it has risen – 1-2 minutes.
- Wait for dough to rise again: the second rise is usually shorter.
- Roll out/shape into loaf (or loaves): 5-10 minutes.
- Bake: 20-40 minutes, depending on size of loaves and heat of oven.
- Clean up: 10 minutes max.
Total work time: 30-40 minutes. This really isn’t so much at all, when taking into account the deliciousness of the bread and the fact that I know exactly what I put in it (olive oil, organic maple syrup and home-grown eggs, vs. cheap commercial oil, white sugar and I don’t know what else).
So roll up those sleeves, take out your rolling-pin and get to mixing, kneading and baking. You can read more of my posts about bread-baking here, here and here.
Domestic Felicity 
Shalom Anna:
Thank you for writing this on your blog! Just now checking my emails from the last few weeks, so sorry I am so late (by 6 weeks now) in writing a comment on this one! I too have been baking bread now for years. There is nothing better than the taste of homemade bread coming fresh out of the oven! Well, maybe there is one thing that is better………Cutting into that fresh, hot loaf of bread and slicing off a piece, spreading real butter over it and eating it! Or for an even better treat, slicing off a couple of pieces and making a fresh sandwich out of it! Roast Beef with horsey sauce or mayo and a little bit of salt between two pieces of home made fresh baked bread! YUM!!!
Think I will have to go get me a couple of pkgs. of yeast and make me some before chag ha matzot gets here this coming year!
That reminds me Anna, do you have any recipes for making matzah bread that you like really the best? Could you share a couple of those recipes with us here please?
Thanks
Tirtzah
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Tirtzah, we don’t really do matzoh flour bread… we just eat matzo as it is. Not very appetizing fare, but then, as Sephardim we have more of a leeway with what we eat – kitniyot are allowed.
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Shavua tov Anna:
What grain do you use to make your matzah out of? Agree matzah is not very appetizing fare of itself for sure! However, we find that if we spread either peanut butter or creme cheese on the matzah that it is much more palatable and even just a little bit tasty that way!
Now what does “kitniyot” mean? I know the ending “ot” is plural. So what is “kitniy”? So cool, you are Sephardim? So are you also Rabbinic? What about, I take from this you are not Orthodox. So are you like Conservative then? We are Karaite so we follow only what the written Torah says. We understand it fine without a Rabbi or an “oral” torah.
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