What is a bread post doing in Leo Finance? Well, if you're complaining about the cost of living, you SHOULD be making your own bread. Not only that, it's often more nutritious than store bought. If you could bake an impressive loaf of bread for a fifth of the price of store bought, why wouldn't you?

Here, 5 kg of baker's flour costs $15 at most - you can get it on sale for as little as ten. If we make 400 g loaves of bread, that means you can make a loaf for around $1 - $1.50.

How much does a good loaf of bread cost where you live? Let me know in the comments below.

The thing is, I know that bread can be super intimidating, especially sourdough bread which takes a little practice and can take two days to get a loaf out of the oven.

There's also a lot of people turned off by kneading the bread - they think it's time consuming.

But what if I told you that there's a no knead recipe that's super easy to do?

All you need is...

• a scraper for handling wet dough
• a dutch oven (or not? More on this later)
• bread flour or bakers flour
• instant rise yeast
• water
• mixing bowl
• salt
• baking paper

No dutch oven?

Now the Dutch oven is awesome as it creates steam. If you don't have this, just use a loaf tin or a pan that will hold the loafs shape (it'll be a wet dough and thus kinda hard to handle). Add a small pan of water in your oven to create steam.

Ingredients

3 cups (450g) flour
2 tsp instant or rapid rise yeast
2 tsp cooking / kosher salt (NOT table salt)
375 ml very warm tap water - too hot and it will kill the yeast
1 1/2 tbsp flour (for dusting)

Now don't stress on exact measurements with this one. Depending on humidity and altitude and the flour you use, you might need a bit more or less of water or flour. When mixed together, it should be between cake mix and dough - honestly, it's pretty wet and sloppy!

Wait two to three hours

Cover with a plate or a plastic bag and wait.

It'll double in size and be all bubbly and crazy. If it's not rising, your room might be too cold. Try putting in the oven with a light on and a bowl of boiling water.

Now the fun bit.

Preheat your oven to 200 - 220 C with the Dutch oven inside.

Dust your work surface with flour. Put a sheet of baking paper out read for the bread to squish slide smooch on. Yep, it's gonna be gloopy. Maybe flour your hands too.

Now, tip the dough into your surface and get the scraper to help you fold the north, west, south and east corners over. Don't worry too much, you're just deflating the dough slightly. Now if you know how to do it, you can give it a bit of a tension shape like you'd do with sourdough but don't stress too much.

Now, slide that mofo on your baking paper and put THAT in the oven and cook with the lid on for about 35 to 40 minutes

Tips

Now when you take the lid off it might already be browned a little. You want to keep cooking but not burn it, so don't be afraid to turn the oven down and let it slowly brown on top.

If your oven has a good seal, it should be cooked perfect through

Want a more 'sour' taste?

Now this is a great recipe to have bread in a few hours, but if you want a better taste, leave it in the fridge for the rest of day and cook it in the morning or even the next day. Three days is about the limit but this also means that if you don't have time to bake as planned you can still do it when you are ready.

Make it fancy?

Add sesame seeds to the crust by rolling the dough in it before baking, or poppy seeds.

Fold cheese through it when you do the final fold.

Try adding fennel or caraway, or fruit and spices.

Do you make no knead bread? Are you willing to give this a go?

With Love,

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