Baking your own bread is a small act that will give you an overwhelming feeling of self-sufficiency like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. For the millennial who likely grew up on Wonder Bread PB&J sandwiches, baking your own bread for the first time feels like cosplaying as a pioneer homesteader on the Oregon Trail, but without anyone dying of dysentery, thank god!
Baking bread, as opposed to other types of pastries or desserts, really is a rabbit hole just waiting for a hobbyist home cook to fall down. There’s a whole world of things to be made from flour, water, salt, and yeast, and soon, you might yourself the flour-covered evangelist telling all your friends to give bread braking a try.
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From easy, beginner-friendly breads to more involved baking projects, we pulled together a list of our favorite bread recipes from all types of cuisines for you to dive into. We suggest you stock up on flour now.
Focaccia Bread Recipe
If you’ve never, ever baked bread before, might we suggest you start with something that’s nearly impossible to screw up? Homemade focaccia is a simple dough that requires very little kneading or shaping, but does require a bit of patience—you’ll need that if your bread baking journey continues.
M’smen Recipe
M’smen is a buttery, flaky flatbread native to North Africa that’s often paired with a drizzle of honey or a smear of butter. Either way, this bread is best enjoyed with a strong cup of tea over breakfast.
Pane Pugliese Recipe
Get a taste of what its like to bake with a sourdough starter as opposed to packaged yeast with this pane Pugliese from expert baker Zachary Golper from Bien Cuit in Brooklyn.
If you’re not an everything bagel sort of person (and if so—what the hell is your problem?) you can leave these beauties bare, or just roll them in sesame seeds for a little bit of an extra crunch.
You need just a touch—just a single tablespoon!—of squid ink to make these baguettes as dark and black as your cold, dead heart.
You know that Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich you’re going to make on Black Friday? Take it up a notch with turkey stock-flavored bread.
This dish, popular in Tajikistan, uses a Persian flatbread called fatir that, in this recipe, is used to soak up all of the super flavorful sauces from a roasted lamb shank, but is also eaten for breakfast or as an afternoon snack.
Fry bread, true to its name, is a simple yeasted dough that’s fried in oil or lard. This bread recipe on its own can be served with sweet or savory toppings, but we highly suggest slathering it in sour cream and crunchy cucumbers.
Believe it or not this delicious gut bomb of a cheesy bread comes together in just an hour, so there’s no reason not to give this a go for dinner tonight.
Breakfast is about to get 100 percent better with these homemade buttermilk English muffins. Serve ‘em up with your favorite jam and plenty of good-quality butter.
Parker House rolls are so deceptively simple-looking. Don’t be fooled. They’re kind of a pain in the ass to make—four hours and lots of rolling—but the end result is perfectly flaky, buttery and so delicious that we’ll begrudgingly admit they’re worth the effort.
We’re no stranger to the biscuits that pop out of a cardboard tube (although they still make us flinch), but making them yourself is easy enough that you should forego the refrigerated aisle in the grocery store just this once.
No, not all oregano is created equal. In fact, Mexican oregano is actually more closely related to the verbena plant, but tastes quite a bit like its European cousin, with more savory notes. With a spicy chorizo sausage gravy, this recipe is a perfect addition to Sunday brunch.
Look. At. All. Those. Layers. No one does biscuits better than our culinary director Farideh Sadeghin, and you can fight us on that one.
These lard biscuits from our good friend and host of The Hangover Show, Cara Nicoletti, make use of all that good beef fat leftover after a talented butcher like her is done breaking down a cow.
