I love reading posts like these even though I probably won't ever have any adventures with flour. We eat so little bread and have such a small freezer, that I can't imagine making daily bread.

I love my home-made bread. Just regular sandwich bread. I made no-knead a couple of times, but I still go back to my old standby.

When it was too hot to even think about baking I bought a loaf of bread at the local bakeshop and I didn't care for it.

I bake 2 loaves every couple of weeks, slice and freeze it. Easy to snap off the number of slices I need. I'll often make 1 loaf of bread and turn the rest of the dough into buns, hamburger buns etc.

I live alone during the week so one loaf a week works for me. My current favourite is Grandma Wongstrom’s Swedish Rye Bread that was posted here a while back, but I use more rye flour and less white flour.

I have stopped, this week with the daily bread....just this week, but I did bake today.

I was daily making a bread of 1 pound KA bread flour, 2 T malt o meal cereal, 1 1/2 tsps salt, 2 tsps yeast, about 1 1.2 T honey and 1/4 cup unfed starter....with 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups water...somewhere in between.
But I have been hungry for my pesto bread, topped with "everything" seasoning...Ann's Limpa....Mr's Faust's Swedish rye with a hint of anise seed...and my breakfast bread which is half whole grain flour, with rolled oats and rolled wheat, sunflower seeds and come chopped dried fruit....maybe cinnamon maybe cardamon, maybe honey....whatever. mix about 2 tsps yeast for 1 1/3 cups liquid and the grains to make it bread.
I don't measure hydration and don't get all fussy about this and that....I usually do the stretch and fold knead technique....and do it about 3 times in a rise. The only thing I do measure is salt....1 1/2 tsps per cup and a half of liquid....be it milk, eggs, beer, or water.
I figure I have made upwards of 650 loaves of bread since March 16...I was mixing it up in my sleep.
Things I have learned is a couple of teaspoons of diastatic malt per pound of flour makes a huge difference. Liquid eggs in a box

makes a pretty good egg wash....albeit not as shiny as yolks and I like a serrated knife best to slash my loaves, and a wet dough makes a very lovely soft bread.

We get such good bread here that i rarely make it and am no expert...

Just a wonderful memory brought on by Pllllogs Austrian bread. A skiing holiday with my long gone dad in Austria, every day for lunch at the top of the mountain, we would be fed huge slices of bread like that wrapped round hot knacks and lots of mustard. So good. Thanks for the memory!

Thanks, everybody, for your responses and stories!

I think I was a bit confusing. Linda was baking daily. I bake bread for daily eating (rather than Sabbath or special occasion), but only do so once or twice per week. I like baking a fresh loaf each time. I have nothing against freezing bread, and will do for challah or something else special, but my daily breads are so easy there's no need to do so. If I had more bread eaters, I would make several loaves at a time. That would be more like work, though. :)

Thanks, Linda, for sharing all the details. My table knives are actually serrated. I should try one for slashing loaves.

I started out this year with the intention of baking all our bread needs. Pffft. No matter what kind I made, His Majesty refused to eat it. I was (and still am) crushed.

So sorry, ediej - but more for you 😉

And all those loaves look beautiful!

If I baked bread daily, we'd be up to our chins in it. I have been baking it at least weekly, though. I've mentioned before I make a homestyle honey wheat loaf with a buttery crust, because it makes the best sandwiches.

P.S. Now I see pillog's clarification - that first post is a bit confusing.

Yeah, but there's no editing after the first bit on the top post. :( Sigh.

(((Edie))). So odd. Even Mr. Picky will eat homemade bread, so long as it's a kind he likes. Being picky. :). Do you know what it is about homebaked bread your husband doesn’t like?

plllog - it stymies me, it truly does. I guess it is just because storebought bread tends to have a softer texture. Which I don't care that much for, it tends to get gummy. Oh well... At least I tried. And your loaves look so tasty!

Thanks, Edie! They are! But the posy bread without flavorings (but with salt, of course) isn't! It tastes like white flour. Every flavor combo I've tried has been good. One loaf was a bit meh, but that was because I didn't put enough spice in. The combo was good. I worried that some would be too pronounced with toppings or in sandwiches, but no such thing. The flavor, other than just in bread and butter, is pretty subtle, and is an enhancement, even if it doesn't match (like the curry bread). I love the curry bread! Since I seem to have a glut of curry powder (and would create from individual spices if I were actual making curry), I've been repeating it.

So, you can make a recipe slightly softer in the crumb, without wrecking it, by baking it five minutes less, or adding a bit more water. You'll have to experiment to get the quantity just so. You can also soften it as is by cutting off a chunk, after it's steamed out and ready to cut, and putting it in a Ziploc. Squeeze the air out and make sure the zip is well sealed. That way, you preserve the texture you like for yourself. :)

To get flavor in a white flour bread, you need a good long ferment...really best to make one day and bake the next. Well made and fermented white flour bread is delicious!

Also diastatic malt powder makes a very nice addition.

And a high hydration loaf, in a 425 oven for 25 minutes should be done, and the crust crisp but not overly hard. Be careful not to over bake your breads. 205 on a Thermo-pen is perfect.

My husband says he likes my bread, but it upsets his stomach. Not sure what could be in it to upset his tummy, flour, water, yeast, salt and a little oil. His favorite bread is one store brand cheapest. Not every store brand will do, not many brand names are edible to him.

I make a soft bread - maybe not as soft as those in stores, but pretty soft. I bake it @ 375F for about 25-26 minutes in a pyrex loaf pan slathered with lots of salted butter, so the bottom & sides are always soft & rather moist. I think I posted the recipe here before. I use 3-4 Tbs. honey per approx. 4 cups flour, 1 1/2 cups warm water, 2 tsp. salt, 2 Tbs. oil and 2-3 tsp. dry yeast.

This one is 1/2 whole wheat flour, 1/2 unbleached:

Linda, I'm sure you're right about the ferment. The same flour in a long ferment, plus sourdough rising, is delicious. I've never really liked plain white bread, however. I've thought of throwing in some starter for "sourdough flavor" but without the texture, I have a strong feeling I'd hate it as a pale imitation. And the spices are so fun! The whole point of the posy bread is that it's a quickie. Lots of commercial yeast, an hour rise to double, about half an hour shaped rise, a little longer than half an hour in the oven. Two and a half hours all told from mise en place to cleaned up. Very useful for when the end of a loaf wakes up furry. :) Oh! Wait! In a long ferment for pizza dough, which has other tasty things in it, was also meh. It's very high quality flour. Just white. Doesn't hold a candle to my favorite whole wheat.

Nancy, that is a conundrum! I wonder if there's a dough conditioner or some other additive that makes the store brand bread easier on your husband's tum? Or...does he eat more if it if it's home baked?

Carol, I'm sure the honey helps keep it moist and soft too! Lovely loaf.

Carolb....that recipe is close to what I was making daily...but a little less honey and no oil...but don't tell me you got a 4 cups of flour loaf into one pan!! that has to make 2 loaves!

Back when I had family at home, I would bake about 10 loaves on a weekend. Not much of a recipe, just a quart of water and 4 teaspoons of salt and 2 packages of yeast. Then add flours etc as the spirit moved me. I wrapped and froze the extras, minus what I would take to a neighbor, and every night we would have a loaf warmed in the oven for about 30 minutes at 275....and there was usually a choice of what kind.
I have no idea when I first made bread....but I have a definite memory of being at the Jersey shore in a rental, when my oldest was about 18 months and still napping. So I must have been 24. Everyone was at the beach but I was staying with the napping toddler, and found some flour and yeast and made a loaf of bread. I know there was no recipe so I must have been familiar enough to be able to wing it. Boy was I a hit that day....hot fresh bread for dinner!!

Beautiful story, Linda!

I learned to bake all things, including bread, from my mother, but after leaving home, I never had time for it. I remember making choux puffs filled with fruit yoghurt and partially frozen several times as a fancy dessert in college, but no bread or cookies. :) I only baked challah in the oven which came with the house. It was a pain and a half to bake in, and I can buy really excellent bread. Now that I have a great oven, it makes no sense to buy bread. Especially now, when I can't see it for myself and choose. I did buy some croissants with my farm box this week, however. I could probably bake them, but I don't want to!

I add things to my bread, which I bake 3 times weekly [twice on weekends]; sunflower seeds, garlic powder, onions. Using the no-knead recipe in the Staub ... love the crunchy exterior. I cut mine with the electric knife to get uniform pieces ...

Our daily bread is challah. My husband makes a double batch almost every Friday (2 small loaves go to my son who lives nearby). When my other son's visit, he may even make a triple batch to make french toast for everyone and send a loaf or two home with them. I think my husband would happily have that as his only bread - there seems to be a trend here of husbands who prefer soft breads. Bit it isn't universal; one of my son's makes sour dough and really likes that.

He has tweaked the recipe to use white whole wheat for part of the flour.

If we have any other kind of bread, I make it. So I fill out variety for our daily bread. I've been working on perfecting bagels and rye bread. My bagels sometimes come out perfect and sometimes come out tasting fine but looking kind of bumpy. I think that happens when they have over-risen before boiling so I'm working on perfecting that timing. I'm pretty happy with my rye bread now. The secret to getting the right chewy deli rye texture is the choice of wheat flour for the bread. It needs a flour that isn't quite a whole wheat but that uses more of the grain than white bread flour. BC (before Covid) I was using first clear flour from King Arthur, but that was out of stock forever (King Arthur's website now says it is "sold out for the season." I've found that 110 flour from Central Milling produces good results. I tried it because some websites on flour types said that German 110 flour is equivalent to American first clear.

I also do pita, naan, sour dough and whole wheat breads. I just made some naan and wasn't happy with the results; we replaced our ovens recently and I need to figure out what settings on my new oven work best for naan.

We get great bread here too, but I make some anyway, but not every day - more like twice a week. I buy baguettes because we get excellent sourdough from La Brea Baker and Cadoro Bakery, which gives me bread for free, since I made tablecloths for their Santa Monica Farmers' Market tables.

Haha lindac - it's a large loaf pan 😉