King Arthur Baking School: Basic Bread
Mixing, kneading, rising, shaping, proofing: These are basic steps you’ll want to master to bake almost every kind of yeast bread. This simple recipe, which we’ve used to teach thousands of students to bake bread, makes a pair of lovely, golden loaves with medium grain—perfect for slicing when baked as a pan loaf.
It’s the starting point for bread baking and one of the most important foundational recipes in our classroom. We use it to demonstrate the feel of kneading by hand so you can see how the dough changes from a rough and shaggy mass to a smooth and silky developed dough as you work with it. (See photo on here.)
Servings: 2 loaves
Ingredients
- 624 - 680 grams unbleached all-purpose flour 5¼ to 5⅔ cups
- 35 grams dry milk powder ¼ cup
- 12 grams granulated sugar 1 tablespoon
- 7 grams instant yeast 2¼ teaspoons
- 12 grams salt 2 teaspoons
- 28 grams unsalted butter room temperature, 2 tablespoons
- 472 grams water 2 cups
Instructions
- In a medium to large bowl, combine 624 grams (5¼ cups) of the flour with the milk powder, sugar, yeast, and salt.
- Cut the butter into small pieces and stir into the dry ingredients.
- Pour the water into the mixture and stir to make a cohesive mass.
- Lightly flour your work surface with some of the remaining flour, then turn the dough out of the bowl onto the floured surface. Make sure you keep your hands well floured.
- Knead the dough by picking up the far edge and folding it in half toward you. Press the dough with the palms of your hands and push lightly, down and away from you. Rotate the dough 90 degrees. Start off more gently than you think you should.
- Continue this process (fold, push, turn) until the dough is smooth and springy, about 5 minutes. It will still feel slightly tacky. Handle the dough very gently at first, and as it increases in strength, increase the pressure. Keep your work surface scraped clean (a bench knife works well here), and if the dough sticks, sprinkle the surface lightly with flour. You want the outside to feel tacky while the inside remains sticky.
- Allow the dough to rise in a covered bowl (no need to grease it) until it’s doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.
- This video shows how to determine if the dough is ready to be divided and shaped and also offers an alternative method for shaping a pan loaf from the video included in the next step.
- After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and pat it down gently to deflate (de-gas) it. Divide the dough in half and form into your desired shapes.
- Cover the loaves and allow them to rise until puffy and not quite doubled in volume, about 45 to 90 minutes depending on room temperature.
- Bake the bread in a preheated 375°F oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.
Notes
- In place of dry milk powder, you may replace 1 cup of the water with milk. Scalded and cooled milk will yield the best final volume; nonscalded milk will still be fine.
- See here for temperature guidance.