Who doesn’t love the smell of homemade bread?! Such a comforting, delicious aroma that makes your house smell absolutely amazing!

Smells so amazing that it’s hard to resist and you end up eating half the loaf yourself… no? Just me? I’ll admit, I’m a bread-aholic. It’s hard for me to resist any type of homemade bread! Luckily, after making it consistently, it gets a little easier to put down the bread knife :).

Making bread is not as hard as its made out to be. Sure, it takes a bit of technique but that is easy to learn. It is surprising how few ingredients actually are needed to create an amazing loaf of bread your family will absolutely devour!

Bread has gained a bad rap in recent years. It is wise to not consume a whole ton of bread but in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with eating bread in moderation. Especially when you make your own- you can control the amount of sugar and if you do have an intollerence to gluten, there are many great recipes out there! Plus, it’s so gratifying!

Now that I’ve convinced you to get your sleeves rolled up, oven turned on, and mixing bowl out- here’s the challenge!

Baking Bread Challenge (Mini) June 2016

I challenge you to not buy any store bought bread and make your own for one week! We are going to start this challenge off easy. I was part of a cloth diapering challenge and the ladies in the group asked for ideas on other challenges we could do. This one was one of them so I figured I’d set it up since it goes with my blog purpose and all ;).

I would like to eventually have this be a little bit longer. However, I understand that some people have never made a loaf of bread in their life and one week of homemade bread is going to be hard enough. There are others who make bread often (or are at least familiar with the process) who could easily go longer so for those people, think of this as a “practice” challenge.

This week the expectations will be:

• No eating store bought bread. If you have some left over at the beginning of the challenge, toss it in your freezer or gift it to someone else.
• No using a bread machine! For this short version, use your hands. A stand mixer is okay for the mixing part but use your hands for kneading!
• Use any recipe you want! We would love to see recipes and pictures on here and the Facebook page as we go along!
• Make as many or as few loaves as you wish. No quota here! If you only manage to make one loaf this week- success!!! If you make 20- well…. don’t rub it in too hard 🙂

The challenge will run Monday June 14- Sunday June 19. If you want to start earlier, that is fine! If you want to go longer- fantastic!

I will also be posting a few challenge questions during the week (I’ll try and have a master list before the challenge starts). If you want to answer them- great! If you have your own blog and want to blog your experience or your response to the questions- wonderful!

Join the Facebook group “Bread Baking Challenge” for updates, inspiration and recipes! Keep us posted on your successes, failures, favorite recipes, etc! Use hashtags #breadbakingchallenge #kneadmorebread on social media. Most importantly- HAVE FUN!