Bread: tips & ideas for the novice home baker and upwards!

This post is part of my Baking tips page, along with tips for macarons, croissants, cake decorating ideas and pastry.

Barely a day goes by when I am not either baking or proving a bread of some type, whether it is a sourdough bread or a bread using commercial yeast: it’s a wonderfully tactile and intensely therapeutic process. There are certainly few greater pleasures in baking than the evocative smell of bread as it is baking, followed by eating warm bread that has been spread liberally with good quality butter: simplicity at its very best!

This post is about the basic, but nonetheless majestic bread loaf, made with commercial yeast as opposed to using a sourdough starter, although I dip into pre-ferments as a wonderfully simple way to add even better depth of flavour to bread. I have also posted guidelines for different types of bread, such as focaccia, one…