This 4 (or 5) ingredient bread recipe is very cheap to make, beginner friendly and you don’t need any fancy baking gadgets either.

You can also slice this bread up and freeze it if you don’t get through a whole loaf in a week.

Bread ingredients:

7 g (1 packet) dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup warm water (not hot! you should be able to pop a finger in the water and it feeling lukewarm)
2 cups plain/all purpose flour
1 cup wholemeal flour (if you don’t like wholemeal flour, just use 3 cups of your regular flour)

Instructions:

Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl with a spatula.
Slowly add in your warm water and mix everything together. Note: this is a sticky dough, as long as all ingredients are mixed together, just leave it to rise.
Cover bowl with a towel and let sit to rise for 8-12 hours (ideally somewhere warm). I sometimes let mine rise overnight and bake first thing in the morning, or mix up in the morning to bake the same evening.

Put your loaf pan or dutch oven in the cold oven and then preheat your oven to 230C.
Give your loaf a quick stir while the oven is preheating to loosen it from the sides of the bowl. Don’t knead or overwork the dough.
Add the dough to your hot loaf pan/dutch oven (I normally put the dough on baking paper, which makes it easier to drop into the pan) and put the lid on. If you don’t have an oven safe lid available, you can use aluminium foil to cover your bread tin.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 15 minutes to get some nic colour on top.
Let cool for 1+ hours and then slice up.
Enjoy with soup or as a sandwich!

This bread stores great in the freezer in good freezer bags, but I recommend you slice it before freezing it.