www.WeekendBakery.com

Weekend Bakery

The place for the ambitious home baker

You are here: Home / Why Home Baking

Why Home Baking

33 Comments

Why would anyone want to bake their own artisan bread? We can think of a few reasons…

  1. It’s simply the best bread you could ever taste. And you know what’s in it (and not), so you know what you eat
  2. It’s fulfilling and rewarding to make your own and learn the skill of good bread making
  3. There are obvious health benefits, especially when using sourdough and pre-ferments
  4. You will never get it more fresh than straight from your own oven
  5. It can give you great pleasure to be self sufficient and the process of kneading and baking can help relieve stress
  6. You can make the bread you really like, with ingredients to match your taste
  7. You get the best bread for way less ‘dough’ than the price of an inferior supermarket bake off
  8. You can get the best (organic) flour and support your local miller
  9. You can warm yourself near the bread oven and watch your own bread grow
  10. You can share your bread with friends and family so they can also enjoy the benefits and the taste!

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply to Michaela Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please read our comment policy below before submitting your comment:

  • Only comment or ask a question about a recipe as shown on our website
  • Only comment or ask a question when you have sticked to the recipe
  • We love to help you, but please do not make the questions feel like school homework

The coming months we will take a break from answering comments on our Weekend Bakery site.

Due to recent events our priorities have shifted and we need to focus on what matters most and give attention to our family and people who need us.

Comments

  1. I like how you said that baking at home is really great because you can support your local flower providers. This seems like a great thing to do because you are hitting two birds with one stone. You get to bake tasty food and you can support your local shops as well.

    Reply

    • Yes, it is really important to us to buy local and preferably organic, especially with flour!

      Reply

  3. Dear Stefano,
    Yes, I want to make my own sour dough bread. I know that our local markets use GE flours and commercial yeasts to make their breads and it makes me ill. I eat all organic foods and that means that I must learn to make my own rye starter and eventually my own artisan bread but I have a problem. We live in Arizona where it is very hot…all the time. So, I can’t use the oven as it heats up our little house. I am confined to using a confection oven with a stone on the rack. What I would like to know if what is the best way to start my own wild yeast sponge with rye flour. What is your way of making and feeding your starter? If it is here on the web site, simply alert me to where to find it. I really love the stories you tell here and your loaves are lovely especially the walnut bread. I use US measurements so I don’t know how to convert from grams. I found the converter but it is very complicated. I am pretty simple minded when it comes to that stuff. I am a dress designer, musician, quilter, at-home-chef and a want-to-be baker. My last name is even Baker. What does that tell you. We love bread!
    God bless you and hope to hear back.
    Lin Baker

    Reply

    • Hello Lin,
      We hope Stefano will be able to answer you and share his method with you. But in the meantime you can also look at our (Ed & Marieke, owners of Weekend Bakery) method which you can find here:
      www.weekendbakery.com/posts…asy-steps/
      Sorry you find the conversion complicated, but for bread there fortunately are very few ingredients. Let us know if we can help.
      Hope it will work out for you.

      Reply

  5. I am doing my bread almost 6 months. It is fun and my bread, has been liked with my friends. Baking bread is really pleasure.

    Reply

    • Could not agree more of course mr Salur! So wonderful to see how baking bread and sharing it connects people all over the world!

      Reply

  6. I start to bake and I loved it. I am very entusiastic for it. Besides where I live there is no real bread. So I started to do it.

    Reply

    • Dear Mr Salur,
      It gives so much satisfaction to make your own bread we still love it after many years. You know what ingredients go in it and to be able to share it with family and friends is also wonderful.

      Greetings from Holland,

      Ed & Marieke

      Reply

  7. When you make a sourdough starter how much of it do you leave over to make another batch of starter( after you have used some to make a bread)

    Reply

    • Hello Bert,
      We always make sure that around 1/4 to 1/3 of the jar is still left to add new flour and water to replenish for the nest baking session. We bake quite a lot and keep a jar of around 250 grams of starter at all times, using the method that you find in our recipes. We work with a two step system. When using a preferment (like a poolish or a biga) we use about 15-20 grams of our sourdough culture for a sourdough loaf like our whole wheat levain and pain naturel. With this small amount of sourdough you create a fully active sourdough preferment overnight which you then use to build the final dough. This way you can keep a small starter and still have the full sourdough flavor. Big advantage for home and hobby bakers is you are wasting far less precious flour when refreshing your culture than you would maintaining a big one.

      Reply

  8. I was looking for a chart to convert grams into cups,etc. found your site and loved looking around. Thank you for the pleasure, Carol

    Reply

  10. Hello,

    I am very passionate about making bread. Many recipes and demo are good but without good oven, it will never become as good. I saw that you baguette used a oven with stone as a shelf and has steam function. It looks small which works best for home use. Can you recommend brand and model for home making? I live in NW USA. Have been trying to google one for years. I am using ice cube spary bottle and pizza stone at the moment. Also, for proofing, what temp and humidity it should be for ciabatta?

    It will make my dream comes thru.

    Reply

    • Hi Kate,

      We use a stone oven made in Belgium by Rofco (www.rofco.be). It’s an oven used by (semi) professional bakers and very passionate home bakers. They also have distribution in America I believe. You can find out via their website.

      For ciabatta it depends on the recipe you use and the times given.

      Happy baking!

      Reply

  12. Hi. Am trying your bread recipe for first time and wonder if your temperatures are for fan oven or normal conventional oven. Also, my oven has the option of a shot of steam. Is this worth using during the baking?

    Regards

    Betsy Dickson

    Reply

    • All temperatures on our website are for conventional ovens unless mentioned. We use a fan oven for croissants but we bake all our bread in a conventional oven. We would indeed advice you to try using the steam option when baking a bread, the steam during the first 8 minutes of baking helps the bread to have a good oven rise and a nice shiny crust. After about 15 minutes of baking you should release all the steam from the oven.

      Reply

  13. Hi, I was wondering if you could recommend a recipe for a gluten free artisan bread (sour dough) that would taste as a normal bread with gluten.
    Thanks!
    Michaela

    Reply

    • Hello Michaela, we do not bake gluten free bread and as such we do not have a recipe. Making a gluten free bread which tastes and feels the same as a normal bread is very difficult and takes a lot of trial and errors.

      Reply

  14. Hello! I’ve recently gotten into my own bread-making and just discovered your site and that you’re located in the Netherlands. I was wondering if you knew of a shop in Amsterdam that carries good, proper bread flour. AH all-purpose flour is fine for getting started but I’d like to branch out and improve the quality of my loaves. Any tips on where to go would be great! Thanks!

    Reply

    • Hi, we buy most of our flours at Windmill ‘De Zandhaas’ at Santpoort-Zuid. They have very good eco flours! Happy baking!

      Reply

  15. I couldn’t agree more! I tried this last weekend to bake my own bread for the very first time and it was DELICIOUS. I followed your tips, so I must thank you! 🙂

    Reply

  16. Olá bom dia!!
    Moro em brasil sou uma simples culinarista e sou muito grata porencontrar o seu site.
    Parabéns tudo muito bem explicado hoje mesmo vou comprar os ingredientes e fazer esse maravilhoso brioche vou seguir receita passo a passo .
    Gostaria de receber outras novidades.
    muito grata lourdes araujo- SALVADOR- BRASIL

    Reply

  17. For me Homebaking is not only healthier, it also saves a lot of Money in the long run.

    With a 1.5 kg Strong Breadflour I bake 3 beautiful loafes of Bread, if I buy ONE Bread it costs me more than the Strong Breadflour.
    My Family loves the Bread and OMG the smell in the Kittchen when the Bread is in the Oben. YUMMY

    Reply

Seasonal Suggestions