Homemade White Bread in the Oven

Name: Homemade White Bread in the Oven – Easy Yeast Bread Recipe
Prep time: 2 h
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 3 h
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: All-purpose wheat flour 4 cups (about 520 g), plus a little for kneading; Baker's yeast 15 g; Warm water about 300 ml (100 ml for the sponge and 1 cup for the dough); Sugar ½ tsp (2 g); Fine salt ½ tsp (3 g); Egg 1 (the white for brushing); Olive oil for greasing the baking sheet

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3 h

Back when I was a kid, for some unclear reason, bread came in three kinds for me: wheat, Ukrainian and poppy seed buns. That probably had something to do with the “abundance” in the shops back then. Many years have passed, and today I prefer white bread to all others. Though, admittedly, I eat very little of it.

Plain bread is made of flour, water and a leavening agent – yeast or baking ammonia. That’s really all there is to it; the other additions are secondary. Salt usually goes into the dough, along with a little sugar to help the yeast do its job. White bread is baked from wheat flour, dark bread from rye flour or a blend. Fat, spices, seeds, nuts or grains are often added to the dough. Buns are frequently topped with seeds or poppy seeds.

Homemade bread is a food in its own right – you can eat it just as it is. But fresh bread is far tastier spread with jam or pâté. At that point, it’s essentially a sandwich. Although plain butter is quite enough. Anyone who never made themselves a slice of fresh white loaf sprinkled with sugar as a kid hasn’t really lived (just kidding).

In many countries, fresh bread baked as a thin flatbread or lavash doubles as cutlery, like the Mexican tortilla. You can use it to eat thick soups, azu, all kinds of meat stews, porridge or even sauerkraut. Italian pizza is, in essence, a wheat flatbread with a topping spread over it. Homemade wheat bread will keep, of course, but it’s best eaten as soon as possible. Toast it, and you can make a superb cheese sandwich.

Baking bread is easy: simple ingredients, a simple technique and very little hands-on time or effort – the yeast does the rest for you. From my own experience, you get the hang of baking homemade bread the very first time, and you never have to ask “how do I bake bread at home” again. Homemade baking contains only natural ingredients, whereas commercial recipes may include various additives meant to keep loaves from going stale, make them softer and so on.

Step-by-step photo recipe for white bread. Homemade white bread is a delicious bake made from yeast dough.

Ingredients

2–3 loaves

All-purpose wheat flour 4 cups (about 520 g), plus a little for kneading
Baker’s yeast 15 g
Warm water about 300 ml (100 ml for the sponge and 1 cup for the dough)
Sugar ½ tsp (2 g)
Fine salt ½ tsp (3 g)
Egg 1 (the white for brushing)
Olive oil for greasing the baking sheet

Step-by-step recipe

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Sponge

Sift the all-purpose wheat flour through a sieve.
Put half a cup of flour (65 g) into a small deep bowl, add ½ tsp of sugar (2 g) and crumble in the baker’s yeast. Pour in 100 ml of warm water and stir: the yeast should dissolve and blend completely with the flour and water. It’s a good idea to strain the mixture through a small sieve to catch any lumps, which you can then rub through and strain again.

Cover the bowl of yeast with a cloth napkin and set it in a warm place. After a while the yeast will become active and the sponge will begin to rise. This usually happens quickly – within half an hour.

Dough

To bake plain bread, you need a plain dough with no extra additions or complications.

Put 3 cups of flour (390 g) into a large bowl, add ½ tsp of fine salt (3 g) and mix. Add the yeast sponge and another cup of warm water. Mix a soft dough. Knead the dough thoroughly until it is completely smooth and slightly sticky to the touch.
Roll the dough into a ball, cover the bowl with a cloth or towel and set it in a warm place. The dough needs to rise and double in size.
Knead the dough again, adding flour, and leave it to rise a second time. Well-prepared dough is the guarantee that this plain bread will truly delight you.

Shaping the loaves

Homemade bread doesn’t have to be round or shaped like a rectangular loaf. Yes, those shapes are traditional and very common for wheat bread. But think of the French baguette or the Italian ciabatta, both of which are long and narrow. So the shape of the bread has no effect on its taste.

Grease a baking sheet with olive oil. Divide the yeast dough into two or three pieces, depending on how thick you want the loaves to be.
Shape each piece of dough into a long baguette and flatten it out with your hands. There’s no need to try too hard to give it a perfect shape. With a sharp knife, make a shallow cut lengthwise along the whole loaf. Alternatively, you can make several diagonal cuts. The cuts should be very shallow, just a few millimetres deep.

Place the baguettes on the baking sheet, cover with a linen napkin and let them rest for 15 mins while the oven heats up. The oven should be at about 240 °C.

Baking

Put a ceramic cup of hot water on the lower rack. There should be a little steam in the oven the whole time, otherwise the crust will come out too hard and crunchy. Put the baking sheet in the oven on the very top rack, above the water. Bake at high heat for 15 mins.
Take the baking sheet out of the oven and brush the surface of the bread with whipped egg white – this gives the loaves a lovely straw-yellow colour.
Return the baking sheet to the oven and continue baking, lowering the temperature to 210 °C. The final baking time for the white bread can be 40–50 mins.
Take the finished homemade wheat bread out of the oven and cover it with a clean cloth – it needs to cool.

Serving

Slice the baguette with a knife. If you like, spread the slices with garlic basil butter. Or make small sandwiches with cod liver pâté. Thinly sliced white bread makes excellent toasted croutons.

Calories and macros

258 kcal

100 g

Protein8.4 g14% of kcal
Fat1.4 g5% of kcal
Carbs49.5 g81% of kcal

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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To Get It Right

How much flour and water

4 cups of flour is about 520 g, and there’s only about 300 ml of water in total: 100 ml in the sponge and a cup in the dough. The same goes for a stand mixer. If the dough is too sticky, add a little more flour.

You can skip the egg

The egg doesn’t go into the dough itself: the egg white is brushed over the bread after 15 minutes of baking to give the crust a straw colour. You can do without it.

Dry yeast instead of fresh

Instead of 15 g of fresh baker’s yeast, use about 5 g of dry yeast. Dissolve it in the sponge the same way, with flour, sugar and warm water.

How to store it

Homemade bread will keep, but it’s best eaten as soon as possible. Keep the cooled bread in a bag or wrapped in a cloth, and slice and freeze whatever you won’t eat within a couple of days.

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Questions and answers

How long and at what temperature do you bake bread in the oven?

About an hour: the first 15 minutes at 240 °C, then 40–50 minutes at 210 °C. Keep a cup of hot water (200 ml) in the oven the whole time for steam.

Why knead the dough twice?

The second kneading pushes the excess gas out of the dough, so after the second rise the crumb comes out even and fine-textured.

Can you bake bread in the oven without a loaf pan?

Yes, this bread is baked without a pan: the dough is shaped into long baguettes and placed on an oiled baking sheet.

What is bread made of?

Plain bread is flour, water and a leavening agent: yeast or baking ammonia. Salt is usually added, along with a little sugar to help the yeast work. White bread is baked from wheat flour, dark bread from rye flour or a blend.

How many calories are in white bread?

About 246 kcal per 100 g of homemade white bread.

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