Step 0: The Ingredients

There are a lot of steps involved in making bread. Some are optional, some are not (you’ll have to put it in an oven at some point!). Bread making may seem daunting, but once you understand why you have to take the different steps and have the tools to take the steps, it won’t be as daunting any more. Being a food scientist, making a simple diagram of the different steps should help you out here. Whether you want to make just one loaf or a whole shop full, the process remains the same.
Step 0: The Ingredients
For every bread, or every food that is, you always start with: the ingredients. For making the simplest of breads (not taking into account flatbreads, only yeast risen breads), you only need:

• 
  Flour (most common is wheat flour): there are a lot of different flours, if using wheat flour, choose a bread flour or all purpose flour (not cake flour) or a whole wheat flour, there are a lot of choices (bread flour, and browse through to see all the other types!)
  
• 
  Water
  
• 
  Yeast
  

The flour will form the basic structure of the bread. The gluten in flour help a yeast risen bread to become nice and airy and hold onto air inside the dough. The water will bring those gluten molecules together and it will ensure the bread becomes soft. Last but not least, the yeast will contribute to the flavour and it will form gas which will create the desired air bubbles in bread. It does this through fermentation. For more details on the role of ingredients, have a look at our separate post on the topic.


Step 1: Mixing
Now that we’ve got our ingredients, it’s time to mix them! Even though mixing sounds simple (and of course, at the core it is!) it’s a very important step. When making bread it greatly helps to mix the dry ingredients first (without any filling though such as raisins, etc.) before adding the wet ingredients (such as water, butter, milk). Mixing doesn’t cost any effort/energy as long as there are no wet ingredients. So not adding the wet while you’re still mixing the dry saves effort.
Mixing assures all ingredients are spread out oer the bread evenly. It assures yeast is spread out through the entire dough and thus makes it evenly fluffy. Also, it ensures the salt is mixed through evenly. Since too much salt will prevent growth of yeast, it prevents (local) inhibition of yeast growth.
Even mixing should be done with care. Yeast can be killed if the moisture added is too hot. Take warm water, but only as warm as you can touch and drink. Boiling water or any water well above 40°C will kill the yeast.