Semiphilosophical Ramblings Concerning Bread-Baking

I have come to the conclusion that most bread recipes you can find are needlessly complicated. Most of the time, I just dump together whatever I have and see what comes out. Of course, you do need to be a bit careful, but it really doesn't require 20 different types of flour and other junk like a lot of recipes online.

Some of the recipes below do have lots of different ingredients, but these recipes are just meant as a random collection of stuff I've made, not some sort of authoritative reference of the right way to do things. The recipe for potato bread, for instance, was found by just trying what would happen if I used more potatoes than usual. The first time I made it, I added way too much water and the result wasn't overly great, but the second time, it turned out pretty decently. Also, I've started using whole grain shredded rye in a lot of my bread, but you should be able to use other flour as well, just have fun and don't take the exact instructions in these recipes too seriously.

On a different note, my later recipes use very little yeast compared to what you're usually supposed to use. I just let the bread rise much longer than usual and that works out pretty well. I figure that it doesn't do any harm and I can save yeast, so I might as well do it that way. Here, though, the same warning applies that I mentioned above - the exact durations that I let my bread rise are entirely random and just written here because I know that it worked for me that way. If it works better to let it rise overnight, you can try that - just experiment to see what works.

Now some general notes:

• Whenever baking bread that's not very wet, you can add a little bowl of water in the oven to create some steam and keep the bread from becoming too dry.
• The amounts of water used should only serve as general guidelines because every flour is different and may produce very different results. It seems that the length of time you let the dough rise also impacts how much water is required. When I let the dough rise overnight, the yeast seems to work its way through so well that the dough appears much softer afterwards.
• Most recipes here are written for dry yeast, but you can, of course, use fresh yeast. The dry yeast just needs to be properly rehydrated with lukewarm water before being mixed with the other ingredients.
• When greasing bread baking forms or trays, make sure to use butter or margerine since regular oil doesn't seem to work very well.
• Some people like to add spices such as anise, fennel, coriander, and caraway seeds to their bread. I don't care much for it, but I guess that's just a matter of taste.
• After putting the dough into a bread baking form, you can smooth the top with wet fingers.
• When baking any bread with potatoes in it, you may need to drastically change the amount of water added because the potatoes may contain very different amounts of liquid. I pressure-cook my potatoes, so they also don't contain as much water as potatoes that were boiled completely in water.
• When making bread with a wet dough in a bread baking form, make sure the form is large enough because the dough may overflow otherwise once it rises.
• If the bread or buns turn stale in the fridge, you can always try toasting them. This has especially worked well with some of the buns I've made - they often turn much nicer after toasting.
• Since the recipes containing a lot of potatoes are quite moist, it's better to keep the breads/buns in the fridge because they get moldy very easily.