The cool thing about bread is that most recipes don’t require perfection for good results.
A little too little or a little much flour or water or yeast? No problem - you can still get good to excellent results.
Kneading and rising times are not exact - a few minutes more or less usually has little if any effect.
Proper oven temperature and length of time in said oven is a little more important… but fortunately modern ovens are a lot more consistent than the wood-fired ovens of yore.
The more you do the better you’ll get. And the more yummy bread you’ll have to eat. So keep at it!
My oven is teh sux0rz. It was in the house when I bought it, and was in the house when my friend bought it before me. It’s probably been in the kitchen 30-40 years. We’ve noticed that things don’t cook as fast as they should. Turns out it runs a little cool. Like today, I needed 375º. I had to set the knob to 450º. Going by the thermometer I put in side nowadays.
I told roomie the bread will get stale fast, so eat it quick! (And then I can try again next week.)
You can get an oven thermometer for pretty cheap – I’ve had the same (cheap) one for the past three or four apartments. Just hang it on a rack and read it off when it’s ready.
IME, though, bread isn’t all that demanding as far as absolute temperature of the oven goes. I don’t make anything fancy, though, so YMMV.
Far more important IMO is the probe thermometer to measure the internal temperature of the loaf.
I really like either Mark Bittman’s (more originally James Beard’s) no-knead lbread and/or modified along the lines of artisian bread iin 5 minutes a day. The cliff notes version is you *mix *up (as in with a fork until everything is kinda mixed) a wet bread dough with minimal yeast and let it rise for 12-24 hours, then bake in a really hot clay or cast iron covered pan.
In the artisian bread in 5, you throw your dough in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, and pull out a hunk a few hours before you want to bake and let it rise.
Both are really easy to do with minimal effort and IMHO really good results. If interested, you can search or I can point you to the right places.
I like to brush the crust of my rosemary bread with salted rosemary ghee just before it finishes baking. It adds a nice salty bite without making the crumb too salty. (Though, as Jaledin said, you shouldn’t skimp on the salt in the dough, either.)
One thing about bread (as I think it was Broomstick said) is that it is pretty insensitive to the details of what you do. Even that ten minute rise probably wouldn’t matter. It would just rise more in the baking. Amount and type of flour, it makes only a slight difference. I should stop this and start a bread for this evening now.
There was about a six-inch piece of the second loaf of French bread left, and it was getting a little hard. I was going to make croutons or bread crumbs out of it, but roomie put it out for the squirrels last night.
A black squirrel has been working on it for some time now, and the bread is virtually gone. He’s munching on a piece now, and the cat is watching from the love seat.
Johnny - You can adjust your oven thermostat by removing the know that controls the temp. Depending on the manufacturer, the adjustment setting is either on the inside of the know or on the shaft the knob sits on. (That sounds dirty).
I’m a fairly novice breadmaker as well, and I’ll add the following:
I always leave out a little bit of the flour (~1/2 cup) and see if I need it during the kneading process. I’ve also found that most dough needs to be just dry enough to hold together, and sometimes I take the Julia Child route of using a bench scraper and a hand to knead to keep it unstuck.
