How is bread made?

A slice of bread is soft, light and full of tiny holes. But before it became bread it was a wet, sticky lump. How does a baker turn that lump into a fluffy loaf?

Mixing the dough

Bread begins with just a few simple things: flour, water and a special helper called yeast. When you mix them and squish them together, they turn into a stretchy, sticky blob called dough.

The baker kneads the dough — pushing, folding and squishing it — until it is smooth and bouncy.

Tiny bubble makers

Now for the magic. Yeast is made of teeny living things, far too small to see. As they sit in the warm dough, they eat the flour and burp out tiny bubbles of gas.

The bubbles get trapped inside the stretchy dough, so the whole lump slowly puffs up and grows bigger, like a balloon filling with air. This is called rising.

Baking it golden

Finally the puffy dough goes into a very hot oven. The heat sets the dough firm so it keeps its airy shape, and it browns the outside into a crunchy golden crust.

Out comes warm, fluffy bread, full of the little holes left behind by all those bubbles!

Wonder fact: People have been baking bread for thousands of years — long before there were ovens, they baked flat bread on hot stones in the sun!