Hey, it's Vanessa from CraftyGemini.com.

Today I'm going to teach you how to make bread.

Yes!

You don't need any fancy machines or breadmakers or anything like that.

All you need is what you see on the table right here.

So let me walk you through everything.

Here you need a bowl, obviously.

I prefer glass but you can also use a plastic bowl.

You're going to need a whisk and a wooden spoon.

Then you're going to have a measuring cup with one and a half cups of hot water.

Here I have some honey, and I'll show you how we use this in a second.

A half-cup measuring cup; some measuring spoons.

Salt and oil; I have Olive Oil but you can use any oil you like to put in your bread.

Here is the yeast, of course.

And then we have two different types of flour.

You can just use white bread flour, you can use just whole wheat, or you can mix them

like I do.

I find that just the whole wheat makes the bread way too dense for my flavor.

So I like to mix them both, and I'll show you what the ratio is when we start mixing

things up.

So let's get started.

First thing we do is take some hot water.

Make sure it's not just lukewarm.

You want it to be like hot bath water, somewhere around 103 to 108 degrees.

I never actually use a thermometer.

I just gauge it by hand and I've never had a problem.

I'll show you what you're looking for.

Now, the honey, I'm going to drizzle just a touch in there, because the yeast actually

feeds on this.

So make sure you don't put a lot, especially if you're making savory breads because you

don't want the honey flavor to come out; you're just using that to feed the yeast.

I move it around with my whisk just to dissolve it.

If you're using sugar, go through the exact same process.

Now comes our yeast.

For the one and a half cup of water I put, I want to put one and a half teaspoons of

the yeast.

And notice what I'm going to do: You're not mixing it in, you're just sprinkling it across

the top.

That's one teaspoon and then I'm going to get the half.

And the same thing.

Just sprinkle it, don't move it, don't touch it.

Just take a clean dish towel and cover it up.

Now you're going to let it sit for five minutes.

After five to seven minutes, this is what you want your yeast to look like.

It looks a little puffy to the top and it's one sheet across the entire top of the bowl.

If your yeast doesn't look puffy like this, you want to just dump this out and redo it.

Make sure that the water's a little bit warmer, maybe it wasn't warm enough, or maybe it was

too hot, so just try it again.

And once you get a feel for it this won't be a problem.

Like I said earlier, I've never had a problem with the temperature; just try to go for a

hot bath water.

Now I'd like to start with the whole wheat flour.

Going to add a half cup -- here's a half cup measurement -- of the whole wheat flour.

Just level it off like that.

And you're just going to dump it directly into your bowl.

And this is where you want to really whisk this up to activate all the gluten and the

flour with the yeast and all.

So, you see how it's nice and frothy, just keep whisking it for about 30 to 45 seconds

or so.

If you want to add more whole wheat flour, you can go ahead and do so at this point.

Some people just use whole wheat flour.

I tend to find that it's too dense, so I like to do a mixture.

So half a cup is all I'll use in this batch, so I'll put away the whole wheat flour.

And now, at this point, I like to add the salt and the oil.

So, I like to add two teaspoons of salt to this one-and-a-half cup of water that we started

with.

So here's my teaspoon measurement.

There's one.

Some people find this too salty, but if you want you can start off with one teaspoon and

then go from there.

And that's two.

Move that around.

(Whisking.)

Now the oil.

I'm going to add one tablespoon of oil, and I'm going to be using Olive Oil today because

I want this flavor in here.

But, again, I said you can use Canola Oil or whatever oil you want to use.

So just one tablespoon, just like that.

Whisk that together.

And now we're just going to add our regular white bread flour.

And you're going to add the flour in half-cup increments, okay, because you don't want to

overflour your stuff.

You want to mix in every half cup and keep going, until I show you the consistency you're

looking for.

So here's half a cup; add one.

And I'll usually add whatever my mixings will be right now after I put in this second half

cup of flour.

Because it's still kind of liquidy and you can mix things in here nicely.

So, for example, if you wanted to make Rosemary baguettes, I would chop up either some fresh

or dried Rosemary and dump it in right now.

You can add anything you want, really; raisins, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, anything.

I mean, at this point you can make the bread into whatever kind of bread you want.

So it's really great to just play around with different ingredients you have in your house

and see what you come up with.

I've actually even put pumpkin puree, canned pumpkin puree in here and it turns out great,

it's really moist.

If you want the bread to be a little bit chewy, go ahead and crack an egg or two in here if

you want that, just play around with it.

It's a really versatile recipe.

Now I'm going to add another half a cup.

Now, notice I'm still using the whisk but you'll see after I mix this in it's going

to be a little too clumpy for me to keep using the whisk, so this is where I'm going to switch

over and actually use my wooden spoon to just stir this stuff around.

Okay.

So I'm going to put that aside.

Add another half cup, and use my wooden spoon, and just mix it around until it's all incorporated

and just keep going.

And the reason I don't tell you specific amounts of flour to use in total in this batch is

because it really does depend on how much moisture there is in the air.

If you live in a more humid climate, you'll need to add a little bit more flour than if

you live somewhere a little bit dryer.

So I'm really just going to show you a close-up shot of how you want the consistency of your

dough to look like.

Add another half cup of flour, and just keep stirring.

And really this is not so hard.

Just takes a little elbow grease and that's all it really takes.

You don't need an expensive, fancy breadmaker or a mixer or anything like that.

I have one of those big commercial mixers and I don't even use it for this, because

really it's unnecessary.

Another half cup.

And you're going to keep doing this in half-cup increments until you get to a point where

the spoon can almost no longer turn or stir the dough, because it's all into one huge

ball.

I can still see it's a little bit loose, so I'll incorporate the rest of this in there.

Just keep going.

You see how it's getting together; it's all combining itself into one big ball.

Okay.

Still a little loose, it's not exactly how I want it.

And do you see how it kind of still sticks to the spoon?

Before you dump it out on your working surface to knead it out, you want to get it to where

it's not just stretching like that.

Another half cup of flour.

You can see how it's not sticking to my spoon any more.

You see that?

Okay.

That's how you want it to be.

And I just take a little bit of flour, sprinkle it around like that.

Then you're going to dump your dough right on to your work surface.

And it's okay if it's kind of in a few different chunks, we're going to bring it all together.

Make sure you wash your hands for this part and just start combining everything.

You see how it's kind of still sticking to me?

You see that there?

You don't want that.

So we're going to get another half cup, and don't put the whole half cup in.

I just like to sprinkle it a little bit, push it into the dough with my hands, and then

I'm folding it in from the inside out like this -- I mean from the outside in.

Okay.

Because it's okay if the dough kind of sticks to you a little bit, but you don't want it

to just peel off like it was doing earlier.

You want to try and get it as dry as you can without overflouring it.

You see right there, it's still too wet, so I'll put a little more flour there.

And this is the kneading part.

Everybody has their own kind of style of doing this.

Sometimes when I get real into it I'll use the heels of my hands, kind of push it in

there.

You can see my fingers are no longer sticking to it so this is pretty good.

And then you want to knead it, it sounds like a lot but maybe like 100 or 150 times or so,

which is not that much.

It just takes a few minutes.

(Music.)

So now that my dough is nice and tight, you can hear that.

It sounds -- (tapping) -- just like that.

Now you're going to take a clean bowl and use a little oil, whatever oil you used inside

the bread is fine, and just a little drizzle.