Super Easy Yeast Bread Recipe for Beginners (2024)

• Quick Breads
• Breads
• Bread Basics
• Yeast Breads
• American Food

This delicious white bread with a soft crust and moist center uses basic ingredients that can be found in most kitchens. Our easy recipe will walk you through all the steps you need to make a perfect loaf of yeast bread, whether this is your first loaf of homemade bread or your thousandth.

With no preservatives and a great flavor, this simple loaf will show you why baking your own bread is so much better than buying it at the store. Experienced bakers will also find that this recipe is a great base for experimentation. If you're adventurous, feel free to alter and play with it to create your own bread recipes. Slice the bread with butter and jam, marmalade, or honey, use it for sandwiches, or serve it alongside soup, salad, or any entree.

The 7 Super-Simple Ingredients You Need to Make a Great Loaf of Bread

Chances are good that you already have what you need in your kitchen to make amazing bread. Here's a rundown of the key ingredients for this simple loaf.

• Yeast: Yeast is a single-cell organism that needs warmth, food, and moisture to thrive. When it has these things it needs to thrive, it converts its food—sugar and starch—through fermentation, into carbon dioxide and alcohol. The carbon dioxide bubbles help your bread to rise and have a lovely, pillowy texture instead of being dense and tough as a hockey puck. This recipe calls for active dry yeast, which must be rehydrated in liquid before being added to the dough.
• Warm water: Regular old tap water is fine, but slightly warm water—95 F to 110 F—is best for activating the yeast. Water should not be hotter than you can comfortably put your hand in, as hotter temperatures can kill the yeast before it does its work in helping the bread rise. It's better to err on the side of cooler water, which simply will make your bread take longer to rise.
• Salt: Salt plays many roles in bread baking—it helps control the rise, it strengthens the gluten in the flour, helps give the crust a nice browned color, and, of course, makes it taste better.
• Sugar: A little sugar feeds the yeast and provides a hint of sweetness to your bread.
• Milk: While not essential to all bread, in this recipe milk makes the bread taste richer and helps it develop a golden-brown crust and a lovely, tender texture inside.
• Vegetable shortening or butter: The fat in vegetable shortening improves the texture of this bread and gives it a richer flavor. If you prefer butter, you can substitute it in this and many other bread recipes. The general recommendation for substituting butter for shortening is to add a little more butter for each cup of shortening. However, since this bread only requires 1 tablespoon, your butter substitute should be just fine with that amount. If you want to be safe, cut the butter stick a tiny bit bigger than the tablespoon marker on the package.
• Flour: This recipe uses all-purpose flour because it's the most common type stocked in the average kitchen. However, if you enjoy baking bread, you'll want to switch to bread flour. It has more gluten and creates a better tasting bread that rises just a little more. The two types of flour can be substituted in equal measurements in most bread recipes.
  

What Does Proofing Mean?

You'll hear proofing in two contexts in bread baking. The first is the process testing yeast to be sure it's alive before using it in your recipe. The second use of proofing (aka proving) in baking refers to allowing the bread to rise—"proof" is used here because we're talking about the fermentation action of the yeast causing the dough to rise and create an airy texture. In most basic yeast bread recipes, including this one, the dough is allowed to proof twice: once after kneading and a second time after shaping and before baking.

Why Dough Must Be Kneaded

Knowing how to knead dough is an important step in your bread-making journey. While there is such a thing as no-knead bread, as well as quick breads that don't require kneading, for many types of bread kneading helps create structure and strength in the dough by helping the two proteins in flour combine to formgluten, which is responsible for creating the elastic texture in the dough and allowing it to trap the gasses that cause the dough to rise.

Why You Need to (Gently) Punch Down Your Dough

After your dough's first rise, you'll need to punch down the dough before shaping it into your desired form and letting it rise again. Gently pushing into the dough with your fist breaks up air pockets, creating a final product with a finer texture and better flavor.

Shaping: Turning Your Dough From a Blob into a Loaf

Once you've punched down your dough, it's time to turn that blob of dough into a loaf. This process is called shaping the loaf and it not only creates a better looking loaf, but it also helps the gluten to further develop, improves the structure of the bread, and helps create a nice even exterior.

How—and Why—to Score Your Bread

Before you pop it in the oven, you'll want to score the loaf of bread by making one or more slashes on the surface of the loaf with a very sharp knife, a razor blade, or a special tool called a lame. Doing so allows the sudden burst of gas that's produced by the yeast when the dough enters the hot oven (an effect known as "oven spring") a controlled way to escape. Otherwise, the escaping gas can produce large, ragged holes in your bread or lumps that protrude from the loaf on the top, bottom, or side. You can make one long slash along the length of the bread, a cross-hatch pattern, or elaborate designs—as long as you give that gas somewhere to go, you'll be good.

Rate This Recipe

I don't like this at all.It's not the worst.Sure, this will do.I'm a fan—would recommend.Amazing! I love it!Thanks for your rating!