White Bread Recipe ~ 5 ingredients

Hi guys, welcome to iCook and Paint. Today we are making basic white bread, step by step, from kneading the dough to shaping the loaves. I'm even going to give you a couple of tips and tricks you may have never heard of before to get you the softest, fluffiest, most perfect loaf of bread. The inside of this bread is soft and pillowy. The crust is slightly chewy with that homemade taste, oh wow. You know what's really great about this recipe is it's really easy on the pocketbook. With just 5 cheap ingredients, anybody can make it and it's super easy. You ready? I'm going to be making 2 loaves of bread today, so I'm going to start with 3 cups of water and you want this to be tepid, so when you stick your finger in it, you should barely be able to feel it. So now I'm going to add some sugar and some active dry yeast. Now don't forget if you're looking for the complete written recipe with all the measurements, the link is in the description. Alright, we're going to stir that yeast in there and if this doesn't happen to your yeast within the next 10 minutes, then it means your water may have been too warm and you killed it or your yeast is expired. So do not proceed with the recipe if your yeast doesn't do this. Go try again and check back later, otherwise if it worked, just proceed by stirring down that foam and now we're going to start adding in our flour. So here's 4 cups of flour going in all at once and I'm going to stir it together so that it forms a shaggy dough. For the best bread, try to go for unbleached flour. It's way better. And if you're wondering about when the salt goes in, well that's coming a little bit later. But for now, I'm just going for a kind of a sticky dough that looks like this. Now this here is a little bit too sticky, so I'm going to add in about another 3 quarters of a cup of flour. You don't want your dough to be too dry by any means, but dry enough that you can knead it with your hand like this. So it is still slightly sticky, but that's okay. And right now, what we're going to do is cover it with a cloth. We're going to let it rest for 30 minutes. So this resting period is called autolyse, and when you do this, it gives the flour a chance to absorb some of the moisture in the dough. The gluten gets a head start in developing and it cuts down on the kneading time a little bit. Overall, you get a much nicer bread, so it is worth doing it. So now I'm going to punch down that dough and now we can add in our salt. The salt interferes with the autolyse, so that's why we didn't add it in earlier. Now you just want to knead that salt in and scrape the insides of the bowl. You should get it nice and clean. And now we have to knead this. Now if your dough is still a little sticky, you can sprinkle on a little bit of flour here and there, but you don't want it to be too dry. My dough seems just right. It's just barely sticky. And to knead, you push with the heel of your hand and you pull it back and give it a quarter turn. And you just do that over and over again. Your dough should be soft. How soft your dough is will usually tell you how soft your bread will be. Knead your dough for about 5 or 6 minutes until it's nice and smooth and elastic, just like you see right here. You should have developed enough gluten so that it has a nice smooth surface and it's just really stretchy. So now we're going to pop it right back in the same bowl, but first we're going to grease it with some butter. You could use oil to do this, but the butter will make it taste so much better. So now we're going to grease that bowl, pop that dough in. So just roll the dough around inside that bowl so it gets all coated with the butter. And then we're going to cover it and let it rise in a warm place for about 1 to 2 hours, depending on the temperature in your house. So here's how it looks after about an hour. Depends if your house is really hot right now, maybe it'll take less time. But this is how long mine took to double, and we're going to punch that down. And now we're going to lay it out on the counter and cut it in half. So you can weigh these two halves, or you can just eyeball it like what I'm doing. But now here comes another trick. We're going to let these bench rest for 15 minutes, so just let them sit on your counter. I'm going to throw a cloth on top of them. This is also going to help relax those gluten strands a little bit, and so shaping it will be a lot easier. So this is after 15 minutes now. I'm going to shape 1 and 2 a loaf for a loaf pan, and we're going to do another free-form loaf. This one's going to be for the loaf pan, so I'm going to pat it out into a rectangle. There's so many different ways to form a loaf of bread, and this is the way that I use the most often, even though I do like to switch it up sometimes. I roll it, and then I tuck in the two ends. And now I'm going to do something called plumping. This is where you take that loaf and you kind of roll it in between your palms on the surface of the counter. You use the friction of the dough to kind of make a nice, tight ball. And you also want to pinch the seams on the bottom. I always like to get rid of that. But rolling it nice and tight like this is important not only for proofing, but for baking. So now into a greased loaf pan, I'm going to drop that in, and I think that's an 8x4 inch pan. And now I'm going to set that aside and do the freeform loaf. I think for this one, I'm going to do pretty much the same thing, only not as many rolls. So I'm going to just roll it briefly, tuck in those two ends, and kind of do a little plumping with this one also. I do want to get that nice, taut surface. The only thing I'm really doing differently here is shaping it into a log, and instead of a greased loaf pan, I'm going to lay this on a parchment-lined baking pan. Now we have to take our loaves and cover them again, and let them rise a second time until they're doubled in size, like this. This time it usually takes 45 minutes to an hour. The second rising isn't as long as the first one. So now we're going to bake these in our preheated 375 degree Fahrenheit oven for 30-35 minutes, or until they look like this. Oh wow, aren't those beautiful? Some people like to brush melted butter on them when they come out of the oven, and that looks really nice, but I usually don't bother with that. Now I'm going to let these cool in the pans for a few minutes before turning them out, but I want you to see underneath, and listen to this. It should sound hollow when you tap it. Okay, so these have been cooling for a few minutes in the pans, now I'm going to take them out. And a really good trick to keeping the crust soft is to actually cover them while they're cooling. That way the steam that rises from the crust goes back into the bread and keeps it nice and soft. So this bread is definitely nice and soft. And let me just show you what it looks like when I cut into it. The crust has a perfect texture. It's homestyle and crusty, but it's chewy enough that it's still easy to eat. And I want you to see that texture in the middle, there's like the perfect amount of bubbles in there. And this bread is soft and fluffy, and it's just so so good you guys. I think everybody should experience making a loaf of bread at least once in their life, I really do. So how good would this be dunked in some balsamic vinegar and olive oil, or your favorite stew? Look at how soft and fluffy that interior is. And I'm just going to break this open here so you can get an idea of the texture of that crumb. See how soft and fluffy that bread is? Oh, what can I say guys? I'm just going to slap some butter on there. And thank you all so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, then let me know you did so by clicking like. And if you haven't subscribed yet to iCook and Paint, then what are you waiting for? It's free! Hit that subscribe button along with that little notification bell. Be well, be safe, and see you in the next video.