Bread for The Busy

For the last few years, I’ve been making bread on a regular basis. Since the start of 2018, I’ve been baking on-and-off about two loaves a week. When I tell people about this gluten-heavy hobby, they always ask the same questions: How long does it take to make a single loaf? How do you find the time? (And how do you get through that much bread?)

Making homemade bread isn’t particularly difficult, but it is time taxing. The best resources on making bread on the internet or in print are typically written by people who have the fortune of dedicating their time fully to making bread: professional, paid bakers. My aim with this little website is to introduce some straightforward recipes that fit into a regular working schedule, whether that means you can only bake on the weekends, or even just sparing a few hours over a couple of days during the week.

I’ve found bread making to be very meditative, and the resulting loaves a wonderful gift to give to friends and hungry dinner guests. Hopefully, this site will give you the tools you need to find the same joys it brings me.

How To Read This Website

The guides and recipes in this website are designed to be read somewhat in order, and you’ll find helpful navigation links to next and previous pages. They’re also designed to build on top of one another, and allow for parallelised tasks and learning (for the impatient).

On some pages, you’ll find footnotes^* that provide some additional (optional!) context or information. As much as possible, I’ve cut out the usual cruft found on recipe sites about how “I inherited this recipe from my estranged uncle’s sister-in-law’s favourite cousin’s chef friend”, but occassionally make detours explaining the science or significance of steps in a recipe. Forgive me.

Finally, if, like me, you find it handy to print off long web pages for later reading or annotation, I’ve put some extra care into making the printed version of this site enjoyable to read too, including a generous margin for notes.

For convenience, here are the pages in recommended order: