The best bread recipes
Give homemade bread a try with these recipes, ranging from focaccia to fougasse and sourdough to seeded.
You can't beat the smell of freshly baked bread, or the joy of eating it warm from the oven, safe in the knowledge that you know exactly what ingredients have gone into it.
1. Basic no-knead bread
It's possible to bake bread that doesn't require kneading. Just stir the flour, salt and yeast together in a bowl, add water, cover with a plate until doubled in size, plop it out onto a tea towel and wrap it up safe, then place in a warm spot. Bake until a deep chestnut colour.
Jim Lahey
2. Simple white sourdough
Sourdough makes fantastic bread with good flavour and texture – it keeps well and makes the best toast. You need to start the process of developing your sourdough starter at least three days before you want to bake your bread. All you’ll need is dried yeast, water, salt and flour.
3. Super seeded bread
Packed with roasted millet seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. walnuts, pine nuts and almonds, this loaf is easy to prepare and will give you loads of energy. Prove for 1 hour and bake for 30 minutes.
Peter Sidwell
4. Fougasse
Typically associated with Provence, fougasse is a kind of primitive version of pizza and comes with a variety of toppings. The flour, yeast, salt and oil mix is scattered in herbs, black olives and sea salt before baking. Serve in squares.
Jim Fischer
5. Gluten-free bread
Peter Sidwell knows that gluten-free bread can be tricky to master – as it goes hard pretty quickly, he recommends slicing it and freezing it immediately. In this recipe, pumpkin, sesame and millet seeds are scattered throughout the dough, as well as chopped walnuts.
Peter Sidwell
6. Paul Hollywood's Mozzarella and tomato loaf
A Paul Hollywood classic, made with cherry tomatoes, torn buffalo mozzarella and a pinch of dried oregano. It's delicious eaten fresh and warm from the oven.
How to Bake/Paul Hollywood
7. Quick rye flatbread
These little Scandinavian beauties are ready in 35 minutes, including cooking time. All the flour used is wholemeal and recipe author Miisa Mink keeps it healthy with rapeseed oil, too. Greek yoghurt, golden syrup, and egg are also essential.
Nordic Bakery Cookbook/Ryland Peters & Small
8. Chapatis
This unleavened wholewheat flour flatbread is a traditional Indian bread. It's super easy to make as it doesn't need proving time – after working the dough, you roll a walnut-sized ball out flat before dry frying it.
Urvashi Roe
9. Ciabatta
The secret to fabulously airy Italian ciabatta is a very wet dough and a lot of patience. This method uses a starter or biga (pronounced bee-ga), which is a mix of flour water and yeast, left to stand overnight.
Wood Fired Oven/David and Holly Jones
10. Walnut and rosemary focaccia
Peter Sidwell adds a cooked jacket potato to this recipe (no, we’re not joking) to give it a richness that works really well with the pools of olive oil. For proving, he covers the dough in cling film and lets it rest for 30–40 minutes.
Simply Good Bread/Simon & Schuster
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