Bread is one of the most important foods. It is eaten daily and is therefore an important source of building materials, minerals and vitamins for our body. However, if you look at the list of ingredients on the back of the bread in the supermarket, you are sometimes shocked by the various additives that are used to influence the taste and shelf life of the bread. Malt (roasted barley) is one of the additives used to darken the bread. In addition, the government has set up a number of rules that are sometimes very sensible, but sometimes really unnecessary. The official bakers of the bread must adhere to it.

Government regulations must be adhered to

The government has designed rules that the baker must adhere to. Apparently, fresh eggs are no longer allowed to be used in the dough, but egg powder must be used in the bakery. This is because many eggs are said to be contaminated with salmonella. Yet this rule is strange and unnecessary, because fresh eggs that are baked with the dough are heated to such an extent that they can no longer cause contamination.

Malt is found in almost every brown bread

Malt, another addition, can be used in the dough. Strange, because malt is roasted barley and it is known that it can be carcinogenic. Almost every brown bread has malt as an addition. In this way, the bread is made a darker brown and the customer thinks that it is healthier. Only malt is not used for white bread, because it must be as light as possible. Light wheat bread is therefore the best brown bread you can eat.

The shelf life of bread from the supermarket

All bread from the supermarket and from the bakery has additives to make the bread last longer. This is especially noticeable with pre-baked rolls. After all, these taste different (and less tasty) than really fresh rolls from the bakery. Many people also want the bread they buy to have a longer shelf life and not to become moldy within a day or two. That is understandable, but in this way the baker can no longer bake pure bread, but has to add things that are less healthy for our body and also affect the taste of the bread.

The taste of a clean, healthy bread

Because of all those additives, hardly anyone knows anymore what bread that is made only from natural ingredients tastes like. Bread without all those strange additives, only baked from flour, fresh yeast, an egg, water or milk, butter or margarine and a little salt and sugar. So many expensive materials are not needed.

Baking with a bread maker

Making bread dough used to be hard work. Nowadays people have the help of a food processor to make the dough. That makes it a lot easier. In addition, nowadays there are very good bread makers where you only have to put all the ingredients in and you don’t have to worry about it for a few hours. The bread bakes itself in the bread maker and after about three hours a wonderful smell permeates the house. However, if you don’t have a bread maker, you can simply let the prepared dough rise covered for an hour and then bake it in the oven.

Multigrain bread often tastes the best

You can bake bread from regular white wheat flour from the supermarket, but most of the good building blocks for our body have already been removed from it. It is wiser to use multigrain flour or whole wheat flour. However, this often includes additions. If you really want to bake pure bread, make sure that you also buy pure flour, without extra additives for shelf life or other convenience conditions.

A good recipe for tasty bread

A good and tasty recipe for the bread maker is quickly explained. Take 450 grams of flour (multigrain, whole wheat, white, or other flour), mix it with three level teaspoons of salt and 11 grams of caster sugar. Put this in the container of the bread maker. Crumble 13 grams of yeast (from a package from the supermarket refrigerator) over it, pour 225 ml of water on top and break the egg into it. Turn on the machine.

Even better bread

If you want to make the bread even tastier, replace the water with the same amount of milk. A combination of multigrain flour and white wheat flour is also very tasty. This combination makes the bread less heavy and easier to digest than bread baked with multigrain flour alone. Take 290 grams of multigrain and 160 grams of white wheat flour. The bread dough is then not so heavy and also rises better.

When making bread dough, keep yeast and salt separate

Yeast should never come into direct contact with salt. That is why many recipes state that the salt must first be mixed with the flour, so that the chance of contact with yeast is as small as possible. If you first sprinkle the salt on top of the flour and crumble the yeast directly on top of it, there is a good chance that the dough will not rise and you will get a firm, small roll. This applies to all dough made with yeast, including oliebollen dough, pizza dough, and so on.

You can often get freshly ground flour from the miller

If you really want pure flour for your bread, find a miller in your area and get the freshly ground flour from there. It hasn’t been tampered with yet. That flour must be sieved before you bake with it, because it may contain small stones from the millstone between which the flour is ground. This way you can be sure that the bread you bake is clean. You know what’s in it.

Additions to the dough for tasty variations of bread

Anyone who is a little creative can bake various delicious loaves of bread with the bread maker. 10% of the weight may be added per container. To a dough made of 450 grams of flour you can add 45 grams of raisins, nuts, olives, sunflower seeds or other things to give the bread a different taste.

Be careful with the butter when you make a delicious onion bread

You can also add 45 grams of fresh, self-baked onions or shallots to a loaf, but then you must subtract the butter used for baking from the weight of butter that you normally use for the bread. If you do not do this, your bread will rise harder than normal and will soon rest against the lid. The bread remains tasty, but it does not get any better.

Small disadvantages of baking bread yourself

The only work you have to do with the homemade bread is to clean the container and dough hooks very well. Make sure that there are no small dough residues on anything, because the dough hooks in particular should not become stuck to their attachment point due to dried dough, because then the next dough will often be less well kneaded.

You can pack the bread airtight and freeze it

Besides cleaning the container, cutting the cooled bread and cleaning up the crumbs are the only remaining tasks. Slices of bread that are not eaten the same or the next day must be packed airtight and frozen.

Bake a few loaves of bread every now and then

Anyone who wants to eat home-baked bread, but is not willing to deal with the mess every day, can also deal with it in a different way. Then let the bread maker bake loaves continuously for about three days every now and then and prepare bread for a week or so. That way you don’t have to bake every day.

The frozen home-baked bread

Freeze the packets of bread in quantities for a day and put out a packet of bread every evening. This way you have fresh bread every day, because after thawing the bread is just as delicious and tasty as when it was freshly baked. In any case, it is healthier than bread from the supermarket and even tastier than from the bakery.