Learning how to bake your own bread is a skill to last a lifetime, and ideal to avoid bread in plastic bags, made with palm oil and other dodgy ingredients. Real bread is made with wheat, salt, yeast and water. You can add on flavours, but overall good bread is just this. Gluten-free flours are also available, as is spelt (an ancient version of wheat that is better for delicate tummies).
Read food safety for people & pets (many bread ingredients like fresh dough, onion, garlic and spices are unsafe around animal friends). Never give crusty or mouldy/hard bread to birds or wildfowl (nor buttered bread), as fat smears on feathers, affecting waterproofing/insulation.
This recipe for homemade bread (Broke Bank Vegan) is super-easy to make. It uses all-purpose unbleached flour, lukewarm (not cold or boiling) water to activate the yeast, plant milk, instant yeast, a little sugar (to give the golden-brown crust), oil (for a tender crumb) and salt (to ensure the bread does not rise too quickly). The Handmade Bakery (Yorkshire) is a good example of community agriculture. It offered ‘bread bonds’ to investors who got fresh bread each week (it’s now thriving, with all bonds aid off).
Baking Vegan Bread at Home offers an amazing aroma and flavour book of recipes that are very easy to make. Find 70 recipes from rustic to artisan, from everyday sandwich loaves to French and Italian breads. You’ll also find cheesy and sweet breads, quick breads and family loaves (wholwheat, white, rye, pumpernickel) and artisan sourdough breads plus focaccia, ciabatta, challah, baguettes and even chocolate bread. There are also recipes for muffins, scones, pancakes, waffles and donuts, along with biscuits, buns, rolls, crackers, pitas, pizza dough and cornbread.
Shane Martin is an undiscovered gem! Unlike many influencer food bloggers who use oodles of hard-to-find ingredients and have more photos of themselves than the food, this nice young American chap offers a lovely recipe blog with all the plant-based recipes super-simple with easy-to-find ingredients. This is a man who cooks for you, not to show off on social media.
He doesn’t use fancy equipment and everything he makes he also cooks for his wife and five children. He doesn’t have time for ‘chocolate balsamic-glazed beets with wild shiitake mushrooms in rhubarb and strawberry glaze’. His latest recipe is for ‘easy cinnamon-baked pears with walnuts!’
where to buy ‘proper bread in shops
Your local bakery! Local indie bakers get up in the early hours to make proper bread, and if you don’t use them, you lose them. In France, bakers are not allowed to take holidays at the same time, they are deemed that important. Even if you can’t afford to shop at indie shops all the time, a loaf or two of proper bread once a week is a peaceful political act!
Bertinet Bakery makes proper sourdough loaves, made with a handful of the best flours, sea salt and water. From sliced bread to bloomers, this brand is increasingly sold in shops, for a better commercial loaf of bread.
pretty (breathable) reusable bread bags
Storing bread in plastic bags is never a good idea, as it just causes bread to sweat and go mouldy. Far better is to use a natural bread bin (say wood) or a cotton or linen reusable bread bag. Helen Round Linen Bread Bag (Cornwall) is printed with eco inks. It allows the bread to breathe, yet keeps the crust crisp. Also in other designs. Ideal for artisan sourdough and rye breads, you can also turn the top down and use as a basket to sell bread, rolls or pastries.
Battle Green organic cotton bread bag can easily handle a large loaf and is wrapped in a recycled card ‘belly band’. The GOTS organic cotton license number appears on the inside label, and the bag uses eco dyes and is made by workers who receive a living wage and fair hours, working in safe conditions.
These malthouse rolls (Doves Farm) are very easy to make (the recipe makes 16 rolls so freeze the rest and just thaw when you want some). Made with organic flour, yeast, sugar and oil, this is made the old-fashioned way by kneading the dough and leaving for hour, then kneading again and placing the dough balls somewhere warm to rise, before baking. If you prefer a simpler recipe, try making 3-ingredient soda rolls (the recipe makes 6 rolls, you can store the rest in a tin for a day or two). All you do is mix flour with lemonade (or tonix water) and plant milk into a sticky dough, cut into 6 pieces and form into rolls, then bake for around 20 minutes.
If you want to make ‘traditional burger buns’, just swap the garlic/herb butter for sesame seeds in this recipe for dough balls. These are made with flour, dried yeast, salt, oil and Flora Plant B+tter (all their margarines are now vegan and free from palm oil). If making more than you need, you can part-bake these for around 10 minutes, leave to cool and freeze in an airtight container, then bake for 5 minutes straight from the freezer.