Bake your own bread, from white bread to spelled bread – easily, quickly and without kneading

Baking bread yourself is completely unnecessary, but only as long as you have a good baker around the corner. But who has that – in short, the man or woman is himself. Simply baking bread yourself is not that difficult, and it doesn’t need many ingredients either.

As a rule, flour, salt, water and a leavening agent, e.g. yeast or sourdough, are sufficient, and everyone should actually have some of these at home. So nothing stands in the way of even spontaneously baking bread yourself. It smells wonderful and just preparing it is fun. Because freshly baked bread is a feast for your taste buds. Whether wholemeal bread, white bread, farmhouse bread, spelled bread or ciabatta, there are countless variations and types of bread. So there are hardly any limits to your creativity.

Table of contents:

• Bake bread yourself – without kneading
• Simple white bread with yeast
• Mediterranean bread with olives and dried tomatoes
• Mediterranean spelled bread or wholemeal spelled bread
• Freeze and thaw bread
• A little story about bread
• Bake your own bread in German
• Now it's your turn, your support is needed

Bake bread yourself – without kneading

Below you will find examples of breads that can be easily baked without kneading and without much effort. Try yourself!

Simple white bread with yeast

It’s quick to prepare. You should have the following ingredients at home:

600 g flour (type 405)
15 g fresh yeast (dissolve in the required water) or 5 g dry yeast
2 tsp salt
450 ml water (maximum lukewarm)

For preparation see: Mediterranean bread with olives and dried tomatoes, only without dried tomatoes and olives but with flour type 405 instead Type 1050.

Mediterranean bread with olives and dried tomatoes

One of my favorite breads. It’s so easy and relatively quick to make, baking it yourself is a lot of fun. You should have the following ingredients at home:

600 g flour (type 1050)
15 g fresh yeast (dissolve in the required water) or 5 g dry yeast
2 tsp salt
450 ml water (maximum lukewarm)
6 sun-dried tomatoes (cut into pieces, more if you like)
10 olives (sliced, more if you like)

It is prepared as follows: Put the flour in a large bowl, add the yeast, salt, finely chopped tomatoes and olives cut into rings – stir everything through once. Now add the 450 ml of water and mix well to form a dough. If the dough is too runny, add a little flour, if it’s too dry then add a little bit of water. Cover with a cloth and let rise for about 3 hours.

Flour on a sheet of baking paper, spread the dough on it and wet it completely with flour. Then place the dough and baking paper in a cast iron casserole, folding the baking paper slightly over the edge. Now pour some flour over it and cut the dough lengthways with a sharp knife. Now put the lid on and for 30 minutes in the oven, which has already been preheated to 200-220 degrees (top/bottom heat).

After 30 minutes, take the pot out of the oven (be careful it’s hot!) and lift out the bread and the paper. Now place the bread WITHOUT the paper back in the pot and WITHOUT the lid for about 30 minutes in the oven – if you like it darker baked, just leave it in for a few minutes longer. Of course, the bread also tastes great with a homemade dip.

In short – in a good 1 hour you can simply bake fresh bread yourself.

Info: Pre-bake in a stainless steel pot for 10 minutes longer and bake for approx. 15 minutes longer.

Mediterranean spelled bread or wholemeal spelled bread

It’s quick to prepare. You should have the following ingredients at home:

600 g flour (wholemeal spelled flour)
15 g fresh yeast (dissolve in the required water) or 5 g dry yeast
2 tsp salt
450 ml water (maximum lukewarm)
10 olives (sliced, more if you like)
4 cherry peppers (sliced)
fresh oregano

For preparation see: Mediterranean bread with olives and dried tomatoes, only without dried tomatoes and olives but with flour type 405 instead Type 1050.

Freeze and thaw bread

Bread generally freezes well. The following tips:

– directly after baking (allow to cool down naturally beforehand)
– in a freezer bag with little air space between the bag and the bread
– Freeze in one piece, DO NOT cut into slices beforehand
– do not leave in the frost much longer than 10 weeks

The following tips will help you defrost:

– Bake for approx. 15 minutes at 220 degrees, switch off the stove and rest in the oven for another 10 minutes
– Thaw overnight at room temperature in the freezer bag

A little story about bread

Bread has been one of our staple foods for thousands of years. In addition to its importance as a staple food, bread also has a symbolic meaning. Bread was and is considered sacred by many peoples on this earth.

As early as the mid-Peolithic period, wild oats and barley were ground into flour and probably soaked and boiled or baked to make the flour edible. In a cave inhabited by Neanderthals in northern Iraq, remains of wild barley more than 40,000 years old were found, which were probably heated. An important discovery that fundamentally changed bread baking was the effect of yeast. If the unbaked bread dough is left to stand, the yeasts present in the air cause it to ferment – thin dough becomes a kind of fermented drink, thicker dough becomes yeast dough, which can be used to bake bread that is lighter and tastier than that made with unfermented dough.

Bake your own bread in German

You can find this article in German at www.rolfkocht.de as “Brot selber backen, von Weißbrot bis Dinkelbrot – einfach, schnell und ohne kneten”

Now it's your turn, your support is needed.