One of my current interests/hobbies is baking my own bread: maybe because it’s totally badass, maybe because the workings of yeast seem like tasty little miracles. (My interest in homebrewing, which I haven’t explored yet but hope to once I’m back in my own kitchen, is perhaps founded on similar principles.) At the moment most of my technique is taken from the excellent Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which is full of kneadless bread recipes where you make a single large batch of dough that you stick in your refrigerator, to be portioned out and baked over the next week or two as desired. Most of my experimentations at this point have involved varying the types and proportions of grains in the recipes; most of the basic recipes use 6.5 cups of flour (which yields four loaves of bread), so it’s a matter of what kinds of flour (or other sources of starch) I’m using for that. The other basic ingredients are water, salt, and yeast; anything in addition to those will be listed in my notes.
Also, if you’re doing home baking then I must recommend the use of pizza stones or stoneware baking sheets. I’ve found that metal baking sheets give a crustier bottom to the bread, which isn’t always desirable and often results in uneven baking. Also, and probably related, I’ve had a lot more trouble with bread sticking to metal sheets than stone.
This is a great idea! I’ll look up the book when I get back to Canada, as having homemade bread regularly, without all the time commitment sounds fabulous.