Homemade White Bread in the Oven – Easy Yeast Bread Recipe

Name: Homemade White Bread in the Oven – Easy Yeast Bread Recipe
Prep time: 2 h
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 3 h
Yield: 2
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: All-purpose wheat flour 4 cups; Baker's yeast 15 g; Egg 1; Sugar, salt, olive oil to taste

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, goulash, 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.

Historians and archaeologists say the first yeast bread appeared in Ancient Egypt. As proof, they point to remains of wheat suitable for milling into flour, sieves for sifting, and the ovens where baked goods were made.

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.

Ingredients

2–3 loaves

All-purpose wheat flour 4 cups
Baker's yeast 15 g
Egg 1
Sugar, salt, olive oil to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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.
Sift the all-purpose wheat flour through a sieve. Put half a cup of flour into a small deep bowl, add 0.5 tsp of sugar 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.
To bake plain bread, you need a plain dough with no extra additions or complications. Put 3 cups of flour into a large bowl, add 0.5 tsp of fine salt 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 and cover the bowl with a cloth or towel. Set the bowl of yeast dough 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.
We'll bake the bread in the oven. 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. 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. Then 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.
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.