Three simple tips to help you bake the perfect loaf of bread

The boss was organising a lunch meeting and emailed the team: could someone bring along some bread?

My colleague Dave replied all with a cool, ‘leave the bread with me’.

It was a productive, positive meeting.  But the bread – Dave’s homemade sourdough was the best I’d ever tasted. (Dave bakes?) I had to find out more.

Like many home cooks, I like to bake, especially when I can share the spoils.

I even have a few signature creations. But bread? I’d given it a go over the years, with mediocre results.

Here’s Dave’s first piece of advice to newbies and doubters like me:

“You should stick to it for a while.”

His point being that, with practice, making bread is a skill that you get better at. This makes perfect sense. Why had I admitted premature defeat?

As Dave says: “It’s too easy to find excuses not to do it.”

Like it takes too long, there’s too much to go wrong, and it won’t be as good as bakery bread. Well, I know the last one is nonsense.

And although end-to-end time is required, the actual work is minimal. Dave’s second tip? He will often make a dough mix in the morning, forget about it until after work and bake it in the evening.

Mostly using a simple Dan Lepard recipe and technique that requires almost no kneading (his third tip).

Dave dismisses the so-called mystique and alchemy of yeast and fermentation with a simple “don’t worry.” He finds the process very forgiving. I’m in!

For Dave there is no turning back. Baking his own bread saves him money, gives him the product he wants, and is not remotely daunting.

“Once you get into the rhythm of it, it’s easy,” he says.

Above all, it is something he loves to do.

“You never tire of that reward of taking it out of the oven.”

• Jo Scanlan is a home economist, a writer and an editor. She has written many resources for teachers of home economics and VCE Food Studies.