What's the smallest amount of bread I can bake?

I don’t bake much or very often, mostly because if I did I would bake all the time, eat all the things, and be even…well, doughier than I am now. I don’t buy bread very often because it is just two of us in the house, and we’re trying to watch our carb intake (see, “doughy,” earlier). Still, sometimes I’d like to have some bread on hand, particularly to make a sandwich. If I buy a whole loaf of sandwich bread, either some of it goes to waste, or I end up consuming the whole loaf (again - see earlier discussion).

So, what is the smallest quantity of bread I could realistically bake that I could use to make sandwiches? I think I could probably scale a recipe down to make a reasonable number of pitas, but I’d really like something I could slice and even toast. Any ideas? Or is there just no good way to accomplish this goal?

You could make a regular-size loaf, slice it into individual portions and freeze whatever you won’t eat in a couple of days. Be sure to let the bread cool completely before freezing. Wrap tightly (I use plastic wrap plus aluminum foil) to avoid freezer burn.

I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t take a bread recipe you like and half it or even quarter it. My concern would be more along the lines of will it feel worth it to go to the effort for 1 loaf? I would instead suggest that you make a regular recipe and freeze the dough after shaping. When you want a loaf of fresh bread, take it out the night before and let it thaw in the fridge and then do its final rise on the counter at room temperature. Bake according to the recipe.

You can make individual biscuits and cut them in half.

When I was in Boy Scouts, we used to make up a single (soft) biscuit by mixing Bisquick and water and baking it over a campfire. You could do the same in an oven (or, better still, a toaster oven – less waste heat).

If you really want, you could buy a “roll” of Pillsbury Grands or a similar generic, undo the entire pack, and keep them in the refrigerator, baking one at a time on a small sheet in the oven/toaster oven. Then you don’t even have to mix anything.

We use the “freeze” method here. Bake the loaf, slice off the amount you don’t want to use right away, and freeze it. When you’re ready for more bread, defrost it. I usually just move it into a cabinet and let it defrost at air temperature.

You can also make “mini” loaves. Here’s an example of one of those.

Freeze it, or just make tortillas or flatbread. There is no law that says sandwiches have to be made with leavened, just like you buy in the store bread. Biscuits are also an excellent option. Drop biscuits recipes are uber-simple and you can make what you need at will.

Never mind. I simply repeated Inner Stickler’s excellent advice. :slight_smile:

Let’s think about this…

I think the smallest written-out recipe I’ve seen for bread is for two loaves, which also conveniently is matched to the size of one of those yeast packets you buy at the store. You could just use half a packet, which would work out to 1 and 1/8 teaspoons of yeast. Or if you buy it in a jar it is, again, 1 and 1/8 teaspoons of yeast (you can refrigerate the unused portions for later). Halve the rest of the ingredients and that’s 1 loaf.

Or you can just bake two loaves, skip the math, and freeze what you don’t immediately use. You can either slice up individual portions for a couple sandwiches, freeze half a loaf, or freeze whole loaves. As already noted, be sure it’s cooled to room temperature before freezing. Bread freezes really well, whether it’s commercially made or home baked.

Never mind

Ziploc makes a sandwich-sized bag. The plastic is much lighter than a regular or freezer Ziploc bag.

Bake your bread, let it cool completely, then slice. I bought a nifty bread slicing guide from dajungle that’s made from bamboo and has guides for slicing three different thicknesses of slices.

Place one slice per sandwich Ziploc bag, then fit as many slices as you can without crowding in a gallon Ziploc bag; then freeze.

Warning: have your freezer organized enough so that the Ziploc bags of bread rest undisturbed. Frozen bread is extremely fragile, and just gently moving it from place to place can turn it into a bag of crumbs.
~VOW

If it crumbles you’ll have the best breadcrumbs for coating chicken.

Not what the OP asked but can you make bread with a single grain of flour?
What’s the smallest amount of bread you can make?

Brian

Get a box of hot roll mix. Instead of making rolls, dump the dough in a bread pan. It rises about halfway up the pan, so it’s a half-loaf. If you want loaf-height bread, use a smaller pan.

Depends on what sort of bread you want. If you’re using “bread” to include “any sort of flour-based dough or batter baked to produce a browned crust and fairly dry crumb”, then sure, you could make “bread” out of a tiny bit of flour moistened with water.

If you want a bread containing some kind of rising agent, such as yeast or baking powder, there’s probably some minimum quantity of the rising agent and proportional amount of flour to make it work, but I don’t know what that quantity might be. I have seen recipes for a single “mini-loaf” of bread calling for no more than half a teaspoon of yeast and one cup of flour, but I bet you could reduce those amounts somewhat.

Thanks, everyone. For some reason, I had it in my head that bread doesn’t freeze well; I appreciate you all disabusing me of that notion.

Bread dough also freezes well and can be kept in the freezer for at least a couple of months. If you prefer your bread always fresh baked instead of baked-frozen-thawed, then make up a batch of dough and divide it into one-loaf-sized pieces (or however big you want the individual finished products to be). Put the extra pieces into separate storage containers, such as freezer bags, allowing some room for the dough to expand a bit as it starts rising before the freezer immobilizes it.

Then the next time you want fresh-baked bread, pull out one of your frozen dough lumps and let it thaw thoroughly before rising and baking as usual. I tend to think that post-freezer bread dough has a bit more of a sourdoughish tang than the non-frozen version, but I might just be imagining that.

Bread freezes extremely well, it’s refrigeration that you want to avoid!

<old_joke>The elementary particle of bread is the crouton.</old_joke>

FWIW, we have a bread machine, and it calls for 2 cups of flour, and the three of us usually consume one of it’s little loaves in a day.

The “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” books have instructions for making a single loaf-pan-sized loaf at a time - though that uses only 1/4th of the dough you make (you use up the rest over the next few days / weeks). My experience with trying to make something for sandwich-slicing was that it didn’t work all that well, but I only tried it once or twice.

Depending on your desired usage though, a loaf doesn’t last more than a day or so. Fresh bread just out of the oven is gorge-worthy.