Easy Homemade Bread & Baking Resources

Not surprisingly, during this time of stocking up (and let’s be honest, flat-out panic buying), many of the items we take for granted are just not available on store shelves. Chief among them, bread…and bread is an important staple for many, most especially when the kids are all home and looking for lunches!

If you can bake your own bread, though, that dearth is less of an issue for you. And this looks like a good time to revive or to learn a new old trick or two, to better situate yourself to deal with not only this crisis, but future impacts that might come along.

Baking and Bread Recipes Designed for Modern Life & Times

The goal of my site and my published works has always been to bring self-sustaining knowledge, tips, tricks, and skills, back to the masses; to modify recipes that make it possible for people to make more of their own, cleaner, better, tastier foods from scratch.

I acknowledge that this isn’t always easy when we are in the throes of our “normal” busy day to day lives. So, I’ve always tried to develop helpful posts and books with that in mind, and find the recipes and methods that fit a little more easily into daily life. I’ve had excellent feedback from a number of readers and users saying that they have found these resources to be exactly that—helpful, easier, less-intimidating, and more manageable for today’s busy home cooks.

Judging from the scarcity of flour and basic baking supplies in the stores, people are doing exactly that—becoming a little more self-sufficient, depending more on themselves, and getting lined up to at least be able to bake their own bread and foods for a bit. It’s an excellent skill for the everyday, but one thing we are also learning is that learning and honing a few of these skills now during our time of need is proving an excellent, in fact at times imperative, skill to have in your repertoire. Knowledge can never be lost, and is always worth having, now and in the future—these crazy days prove you never know when you might need to be a little more prepared toward self-sufficiency.

Bake-Your-Own Resources for Beginners to Experienced Bread Bakers

Following is a compiled list of my books and other resources that can help you fill the needs of your pantry while the shelves are bare (and maybe for a long time after!):

*All books are available through Amazon in both Paperback and for instant download via Kindle/Kindle Reader Apps.

• Your Daily Homemade Bread: Easy Stand Mixer Bread Recipes: Best Basics (Volume 1): This book is an easier, faster way to bake great bread at home, using
  

your stand mixer (think, KitchenAid® mixer breads). It uses instant/rapid rise yeast to speed and streamline the process.

No pan? No problem! Choose the French or Italian breads that only require a simple baking sheet!

• Your Daily Homemade Bread: Easy Stand Mixer Dough Recipes: Bagels, Rolls, and Sweet Treats (Volume 2): Volume two of the above series expands the horizons of easy homemade bread baking and gives you recipes for easy homemade bagels, donuts, rolls, buns, and more.
  
  
• Quick-Time Homemade Bread and Pastries: Real Homemade Yeast Breads, Rolls, and Doughs Made Simple, in Less Time: This book requires NO STAND MIXER – so no worries if you don’t have one!
  
  It does bring in many of the same or similar recipes as the above series and utilizes instant/rapid rise yeast for many of them, again, to streamline and speed the process of baking bread at home.
  
  However, you will also find recipes for NO-KNEAD BREADS that use only a small, small amount of regular active dry yeast

—so if your yeast supply is getting low, take a look at these recipes! No-Knead bread recipes are also excellent time savers, as the “hands-on” time is virtually nil (and the science of it is kind of fun, too). You’ll find bagels, rolls, and sweet treats, too.

• Make-Ahead Mix Day: Complete Recipes and Instructions for On-Hand Homemade Quick Mixes: This book is a collection of mason-jar baking mixes that you can prepare ahead and use as needed. They keep very well stashed on a pantry shelf and provide a quick, cleaner, preservative-free version of the grocery store baking mixes that make life easier.

The measuring and proportioning involved in making these mixes is a great project to do with kids—and one that extends learning in a practical way, too!

Even if you don’t want to take the time to make a lot of mixes ahead, the batches themselves make good, easy baking recipes with normal, minimal ingredients.

• Sourdough Starter Recipe (Levain): Yeast is one of those somewhat scarce ingredients on the grocery stores lately—probably because they don’t stock as much as they used to, anyway, so it can sell out quick with just a few shoppers. Sourdough bread doesn’t need yeast, though. And you don’t need yeast to make a sourdough starter! This is a traditional, healthy bread (actually better tolerated by a lot of people because of the breakdown of the process), often used by frugal mothers and grandmothers and by rural-dwellers who didn’t rely on frequent trips to the corner store—they simply kept a starter culture going in the kitchen instead.
  
  And yes, you will find some easy sourdough bread recipes in the Quick-Time Homemade Bread book above!  (*Note: Though you do not need yeast to make a sourdough starter or to make sourdough bread, if you have a pinch to spare you can throw it in to make the process go a little faster.)
  
  
• Beer Bread Recipe (plus make-your-own self-rising flour link): Beer bread is technically a quick-bread, but easier and unlike any other you’ve ever eaten.

It’s a quick bread a bit more like regular sandwich bread that is great to have with butter, as a dinner side, or with cheese, and it works well for sandwiches, too.

This recipe could be a real life-saver for those of you who are out of bread and out of time!

Math, Science, Life Skills, Learning…Baking Has a Lot of Educational & Life Value to Offer!

Let’s not forget—baking is actually a very valuable learning exercise that includes a lot of hands-on math and science, reading, and more. For many of you battling the boredom and looking for meaningful, useful ways to muddle through these awkward pseudo-homeschooling times, wrapping in some bread-making and baking activities is truly double-duty!

I hope you find these resources very useful. All are available via Amazon in paperback and for immediate download for Kindle and Kindle e-reader apps; just follow the above links.

Stay safe, take heart, and BE WELL!!

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