If you eat bread, the quality of bread you are putting on the table could be contributing to your health, or slowly making you sick. The best way to have healthy bread on the table is to make it yourself.

It can be overwhelming to get started, but it doesn’t have to be.

Many years ago when my husband and I were working on a farm on the other side of the world, I made a list of things I wanted to start doing when we got back home. Making bread was at the top of the list. When we got back, I borrowed a book from the library, followed the instructions, and made my own bread. It wasn’t as healthy or as tasty as the bread I make now, but it was homemade bread, and it changed my life.

Before that time, needing to get bread was what made us go shopping twice a week. We didn’t eat soy, and at that time there was only one kind of bread that didn’t have soy in it. If anything happened to that bakery’s deliveries, if other people bought it before we could, or if the bakery closed up for a week to go on holiday, we were out of bread. By taking charge of one small aspect of our food supply, it made us more resilient to emergencies and supply disruptions, and meant that I had more time at home.

In our home, bread has always been an important part of how we eat. It makes an easy breakfast or light meal, a quick snack, and something extra to fill in around the corners of lunch or dinner. By making our own bread, we have healthy and tasty bread, in abundance, made at home for less than it costs to buy bread.

There is a rhythm to making bread that can be nourishing and grounding in a busy life. Every night I feed the starter or begin a dough, every day I finish the dough, shape it, leave it to rise, and then bake it. For me it’s not one extra thing to have to remember in a busy day, it’s an essential part of life.

Even if I didn’t bake every day, I would still enjoy the process of mixing ingredients, developing the dough, watching it ferment, smelling and feeling it to see if it’s ready, and baking it. These processes don’t actually take up much time, and can fit in here and there among other kitchen tasks. It is an amazing feeling to pull a loaf out of the oven, smell the delicious smell of freshly baked bread, see how it’s sprung up in the oven and developed a golden-brown crust, and know that this is our bread, and that I’m making something this delicious from scratch.

5 reasons to make your own bread

Frugality
Making bread at home is far cheaper than buying it. The savings don’t stop at bread, there are many other recipes you can make at home with sourdough, from pizza, to flatbreads, burger buns, pancakes, pastries, chocolate cake, soda bread, pies, and more.

Health
When you make your own bread, you know exactly what goes into it.

Taste
You can create the best tasting bread at home. By making bread at home, you can enjoy the very freshest bread, the best ever pizzas, cinnamon buns, and other treats.

Lifestyle
The more food you can produce at home, the more you can stay at home doing the things that you like to do. The process of making sourdough bread can also be relaxing in a busy lifestyle.

Resilience
In the time of supply disruptions and panic buying in 2020, bread was one of the first things to be emptied from the shelves. By making our own bread, this wasn’t something we had to worry about. Making bread is something anyone can do towards self reliance.