Bread for the very beginner

Question

First of all, thank you for reading this absolute beginner topic :)

I want to make bread at home. To be specific, I used to live in Germany and ate a lot of this type of bread:

It's called Zwiebelbrot in Germany.

I also have something like this.

For the very very, absolute beginner, what do I really need to make bread at home?
Do I need a bread-maker machine, or is my kitchen already enough for this task?
Are there any tip that you want to give me on my first bread adventure?

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RESULT:

First of all, gather all types of stuff from (mamas) kitchen :D

Mix everything youghly, drop an egg on it

In a pan, easily fry some onions

After that, mix everything together, add the onions:

After that, knead everything WILDLY (notice the blur on my head:) :

The final result should look something like:

SUMMARY:

My FIRST try ever to make bread, I'm so proud:)

After that, the raw product was:

The finished product:)

and the grande finale:)

Thank you very much :)

Answer 1

To make basic bread, including Zwiebelbrot, all you need is a place to mix and knead ingredients (clean work surface or large mixing bowl), a warmish place for rising, and an oven with reasonable temperature control.

For the onions you need a small pan, and a stove top. Or you can do them in the oven too!

Therefore, your kitchen looks fine.

Making bread is not difficult, or hard work. The effort and time required for kneading bread is way overrated. Also have patience, allow the dough to rise properly.

Expect a few failures; search the net about any failures, if you have them.

Use a marker pen on the oven dial when you find the right temperature (The calibration of the dials is usually not very accurate).

For Zwiebelbrot, you can cook the onions in a shallow tray or light pan in the oven while waiting for it to come up to temperature for the bread. Make sure you cool the onions before spreading on the dough. A simple way is to spread them out on a spare metal oven tray for a few moments first.

Answer 2

In terms of equipment the one thing you may not have is a dough scraper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dough_scraper

I recommend one of the really cheap flexible plastic ones. These are good for the first stages of mixing the dough, scraping dough out of the bowl and partitioning the dough if you want to make rolls.

Other than this, a large bowl, a flat surface and a kitchen scale (weigh ALL ingredients) are all that you need.

Most recipes should work. I also recommend using this method for kneading dough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvdtUR-XTG0&feature=related

You don't have to knead as long as in the video to get a decent result. It's cleaner than the more typical method of using the heel of your hand and you don't have to add excessive amounts of flour which makes it easy to get a good result every time.

Once you have the basics down, variations are pretty easy.

Answer 3

Don't forget to cover your bread when it rises. You can do this with a towel, this prevents the bread from drying out.