Basic Bread

by Teddy on 2026-02-13

So okay, let me say this straight off: Japanese food is the best food in the world, and Hokkaido food is the best food in Japan. It's just spectacular. It's not just the foods they choose to make, it's the execution - they just have such high standards for their food. Everything they make is the best version of whatever that thing is.

But.

There are a lot of foods that they don't even try to make, and some of them are foods that I, as an American, view as staple foods. Like bread - you'd think, yeah, of course, it's Asia, they lean on rice for their carbs, right? And that's true, except they love French patisserie. They actually have a ton of bakeries and do a ton of bread items. And all of them are sweet.

I honestly think I would've been fine without bread if it just wasn't available there, but having loaves of incredible sandwich bread in every grocery store was torture when all of them were sweet. Like, Japanese sandwich bread is to white bread is to wheat bread - it's not mind-bogglingly sweet, and you can use it for sandwiches, but it is really sweet, and it's so soft. Ugh, like, again, it's a delightful example of what it's trying to be, but what it's not trying to be is tangy or crusty or dry. And after six months in Japan, I grew to really miss savory bread.

So when I got back to the States, I decided to learn more about baking bread. It's not been, like, a dedication or a committment, but I've been on the lookout for easy recipes. Something interesting I've learned: there's like, one basic bread recipe, and it's this:

  • ~1 tbsp yeast
  • ~1 tsp salt
  • ~3 cups warm water
  • ~6 1/2 cups of flour

Mix ingredients, then knead a bit, then let rise, then bake.

There's lots of variations - longer rise, shorter rise, add a shape and a second rise, bake it with a tray of water beneath it, flatten it, roll it into a ball, whatever whatever; I've seen this recipe in a lot of different places with a lot of different nuances, but it's all basically just those proportions of ingredients and those fundamental steps. This is probably something very well-known and anyone who's done any serious baking is chuckling at me like I chuckle at new writers who've just discovered the Hero's Journey, but dang, man - the Hero's Journey is a revelation if you've never heard of it before!

If you shape the dough into flat disks, it makes a great pizza dough. If you skip the knead and refrigerate it after the rise, after a couple days it makes a good tangy crusty bread. Yesterday I wrapped meat and cheese in it, gave it an egg wash, and made calzones; I think I'm going to try pan-frying it soon and try for a naan-ish flatbread.

I don't have any good pictures because I've forgotten how to remember to take pictures, haha, but maybe sometime soon I'll post some.