My wife bakes two loafes of sourdough bread every Weekend, without a breadmaker or anything Its always great, even when its "bad" its still way better than any storebought bread
I make all my own bread, never owned a bread maker. Sourdough is delicious and healthy, but takes some planning. Highly recommend pantrymama.com for all things sourdough.
Pro tip, bread of any type freezes really well. I bake a loaf, slice it, and put slips of parchment in between each slice so I can pull one or two pieces out at a time. Never put it in the fridge though, because that just makes it stale.
King Arthur flour is another good resource (and good flour). They have a hotline where you can get help if needed.
Here's a 4 ingredient Artisan loaf recipe that is foolproof:
Less than $1.75 cad with 'regular priced' groceries. If you buy bulk, etc, the cost drops below $1.40.
We make pizza every weekend, so 1 or 2 dough at a time.
And we make bread with a generous amount of trail mix added at least 2 or three times a week.
Our entire level bread machine paid for itself in a few months.
And we could be using it to make all kinds of dough and bread. One of my most used appliances.
I bought an old bread machine from a thrift store for $15. Took a little bit, but I found it's original manual online and it had a bunch of recipes in there. We usually use the basic white bread recipe in a 2 pound loaf (matches the programs it has). Recipe is as follows:
1.25 cups +2tbsp of hot water
3tbsp sugar
3tbsp oil
1.5tsp salt
4 cups bread flour (I use all purpose and it works fine)
4tsp yeast
The program mixes the bread for about 5-10 minutes, then bake for a little under an hour. So in about an hour and pennies worth of ingredients, we have a homemade loaf of bread. The only issue I have is storing it and keeping it away from the air. The stuff gets stale pretty quick. That's when I make French Toast. Good luck with your search.
For making a bread that doesn't go stale, there's a trick of mixing about 40% of the flour with a bit of water, heating it on a stove until it turns into a coagulated paste and then chilling it before mixing it back into the dough. That's how I make a brioche type yeast bread, but it should be possible to do for regular bread too.
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