New to Bread Baking? My First Loaf.

With people needing to stay at home, learning to bake bread has grown in popularity. Traffic to this site is up over 40 fold.

Bread type is based on what causes it to rise (leaven agent). The most popular is yeast. The other type is a soda bread using some form of baking soda and an acid. The easiest bread to make is a soda bread. It is ready in under an hour and is yummy right out of the oven. A good first recipe for beginners is "Quick and Easy Soda Bread."

A nice first recipe for yeast bread is "My First Challah." "Oatmeal Bread" is also easy to make, and has a wonderful taste and body.

Out of yeast, how about growing your own sourdough starter? "How to Make Sourdough Starter," then "First Sourdough Recipe."

"Batter Up." Pancakes and waffles are soda breads with a high ratio of fluid-to-dry ingredients, forming a batter rather than a dough. Baking with batter has several attractions for me. Start-to-eat is often as short as 15 minutes. Two basic recipes include "Simple Milk Pancakes" and "Simple Milk Waffle."

Recently I added a new category, Pizza. During the lockdown, I challenged myself to figure out how to make a thin-crust pizza that I enjoyed. The biggest challenge was how to roll out the dough: The Thin Crust Pizza Silver Bullet, then a good Thin Crust Pizza Dough.

Enjoy On Bread Alone.

Baker Rich

Rich Helms spent a career in computer research and development. He attacks his baking from the angle of a researcher, creating structure in the recipes. "It is how I think and work.” Rich is a commercially trained coffee roaster and baker.