Does anyone have a good bread recipe for a beginner?

Kitchen Aide Mixer is the key here to not have to knead the dough which can take a while to do, it has a dough hook and I love mine. I make all sorts of homemade breads with it and just today made the dough for carmel pecan rolls which took no timeat all to do following the recipe because my mixer did the work for me. The hardest thing for me was waiting for the dough to rise then punch it down and rise again. My personal time to get the dough made and rolled out, putting a thin layer of brown sugar on and a sprinkling of chopped pecans, then rolling it up as a jelly roll was no more than 2 hours total which I believe it leans closer to the hours side but I didn’t time it. My rolls are right now in the form of jelly rolls in the refridge waiting to slice, let rise and bake on Thanksgiving morning.

How to Make Classic White Bread.
This is a great site for beginners http://www.joyofbaking.com/QuickBreads.html

OP says, “I don’t have a bread maker.” People made bread for thousands of years before the invention of the gadgets, remember. It’s all in the kneading and the patience for the several risings. @Smitha‘s recipe looks perfect; Martha Stewart is a very good teacher.

In his book Beard on Bread, James Beard has a wonderfully simple and very tasty recipe for a plain white bread. By following his recipe and all the wonderful information that fills the book about proofing the yeast, kneading, etc., I am always successful.

@Smitha That recipe looks easy to follow! Thank you!

@gailcalled Ah, the kneading is my favorite part. The gadget-free approach is so much more fun than whipping everything up in a matter of minutes.

When cooking I refer to my very old cookbook that is actually older than me published in 1959 Mary Margaret McBride Encyclopedia of Cooking is what I used to learn how to cook from since it was a wedding gift my mother had received when she married my father. I bought a copy of the book on ebay, its a bit pricey but if you watch for it I found mine for less than some. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2054897.m570.l1313.TR1.TRC0.A0.Xmary+margaret+mcbride&_nkw=mary+margaret+mcbride&_sacat=267&_from=R40 It is huge and has virtually anything you want to make. It even gives instructions on how do do anything you could want to do in the kitchen.

@mambo Even I don’t have bread maker and I love baking, mostly cakes. The recipes by Martha Stewart and Stephanie Jaworski are excellent and well illustrated.

Pretty much anything, from how to even set a table, to making infant formula (like they used back in the 50’s and 60’s before the canned stuff), How to breastfeed, making cocktails, pickling & canning, freezing guidelines, its like a 50’s how to manual on being a housewife along with over 25,000 recipes. It even shows you what part of the animal certain cuts of meat are from. Its an awesome book I don’t know why they don’t bring it back into print. With the

@Smitha Right now, I work at a bakery and make sweets daily. I love it! However, bread baking was foreign to me when I started.

@creative1 Oh my goodness, that book sounds wonderful. I love those types of older books because they pass on so much useful information that isn’t readily available these days.

By the way, I just pulled my first sourdough loaves out of the oven. They are delicious! I’m pleasantly surprised.

I can’t say how much pleasure it gives me to hear about someone baking bread and doing it by hand, completely by hand, way to go @mambo!

Pizza dough bread. :P

It’s super simple.

I even make this organic and vegan style.

Just follow the instructions on the package of pizza yeast, you can make it into whatever shape you want, then spread with your desired garlic butter I just used real minced organic garlic and earth balance butter and parmesan cheese which I use vegan parmesan on top and cook for 12 minutes. I’m pretty sure it’s similar to Little Cesars.