This is the first bread recipe I learned to bake as a wee-lass, my Grandma Rosemarie’s German Bread. After you mix the ingredients it only takes 30-45 minutes to rise and 30 minutes to bake. In less than an hour and a half you can see if you enjoy bread baking!

I plan to get into sourdough bread next week- but want to know if you even like baking bread? Give this recipe a try and let me know how it turned out in the comments.

If you want pictures of the steps, I added them at the end, so the recipe is not separated by them.

Recipe

• 2-1/2 cups luke-warm water
• 1 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 packets of instant yeast or 4.5 tsp of instant yeast not in packet form
• 5-6 cups of bread flour (Use all-purpose if its what you have on hand – just kneed it a bit longer)
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1 egg

1. Mix the water, sugar, and yeast together in a separate cup/bowl. You are basically just checking to see if the yeast is alive (Sometimes I just skip this step? lmao I live dangerous). If you do this step, just let it sit for 10 minutes, if it foams up than the yeast is alive and kicking.
2. Mix 5 cups of flour and salt in a bowl. Once ready, add the water mixture into the flour.
3. Combine the ingredients in the bowl until you have a dough! Add more flour if it is sticky. The dough should not be sticky. I prefer for it to have a little tackiness, just because I feel like it forms better. But add as much flour as you want! Go crazy, its your bread.
4. Once the dough is formed, kneed that bitch for like 5-10 minutes. You can use a Kitchenaid with a dough hook to do this as well!
5. Pre-heat the oven to 420°
6. Oil a bowl, and put the dough in with a towel over the top. Put the bowl on top of the fridge (it is warmer up there). Now let it rise for 30-45 minutes. The dough should double in size.
7. Form the dough into a loaf. Use your imagination! I usually just form it to look like a loaf? Not very imaginative but it works. I usually just put the dough directly on the oiled sheet pan I plan to work on and elongate the dough into loaf form, and tuck the edges as necessary to make it look nice.
8. Bake the bread on a sheet pan in the oven for 20 minutes. While it is baking, crack an egg and separate the egg whites from the yolk. Whisk a little water into the egg white. This is your egg wash.
9. After 20 minutes, pull the loaf out and brush the egg wash over the top of the bread. If you have a sweet kitchen brush, use that. Otherwise just use paper towel to transfer the egg wash (or just a kitchen rag for all the non-waste homies out there).
10. Bake for another 10 minutes.

Steps to form the dough

How I form my dough into a cute little loaf of bread

There isn’t really any special way to form it. This is how I form it, and it makes a great loaf. The downside of this method is there are wrinkles at the bottom on the loaf. I will add extra pictures to show these. You can either leave the wrinkles (the bread looks and tastes the same), or you can pinch the ends to get rid of the wrinkles.

Baking the bread + final product!

Voilà! You have baked a loaf of bread. Let it cool for at least an hour. Then feast down on your accomplishment. Enjoy with some yummy butter and jam? Make a grilled cheese? With some eggs in the morning? The world is your oyster now that you took the first step in breaking down the patriarchy and demystifying hobbies you have wanted to try.

Let me know how you like it! Feel free to follow for more. Next week I will be delving into the not that hard world of sourdough.

• Pinterest

Follow us on Pinterest to get our latest updates!