**This is a guest post**

Anyone who makes bread at home knows it can be a challenge. But if you follow our tips below, we think you will learn how to make great bread at home in no time:

1. Use a Baking Stone: Most people use a pan, and that is fine. But if you invest in a baking or pizza stone, your bread is going to get a lot better. A baking stone will give you more heat, and more heat will form a crisp crust like on the bread you buy at the bakery. To use your stone, you should preheat the oven with the stone inside for 30 minutes. Put your bread on the stone directly. Another possibility is to use unglazed ceramic tiles, if the bread stone is too expensive.
2. Ice: What does ice have to do with baking bread? A lot! Getting good results with baking bread has much to do with creating steam. But most ovens do not have a steaming ability, so we have to get creative. When you preheat, put a metal pan on the lower rack. When you put the dough in the oven, throw some ice in the pan. The steam will ensure that the bread rises more and you will get a great crust.
3. Try a Dutch Oven: Many bakers know to use a Dutch oven for no-knead breads, but you can use it for all types of bread, as long as you don’t mind it being round. The Dutch oven makes an oven inside your oven, so you will get a great crust on the bread.
4. Try a Lid: Just like the Dutch oven, using a lid can help to create a much hotter atmosphere around your bread to get you a thick crust. Preheat your large, domed lid, and when you put the dough in the oven, cover it with the lid.
5. Misting: Just like with ice, misting your bread works in very much the same way. It will help to create steam to help the bread to rise and make a good crust. After you put the bread in the oven, you should mist it 5-6 times with water from a spray bottle. Make sure that the spray bottle is clean of course and does not have any cleaning solutions inside. Close your oven door right away and mist it a few minutes later. Then, mist it a few minutes after that. If you are using a lid on your bread, you can spray the dough before you cover it with a lid. But, you do not need to mist it more than once, as you do not want to raise the lid over and over.
6. Weigh, Don’t Measure: When you are able to, use a scale to make sure you are using the precise amounts of flour and salt. Professional bakeries use baker’s percentages to ensure they get the same results every time. You can do the same. It is very important to not put too much flour into your recipe. This is what usually causes tough, dry loaves of bread at home.
7. Add Salt: Salt has many important chemical interactions with flour and yeast that will really add to the flavor of your bread. Many breads in Europe have a lot of salt which helps to give their breads so much flavor. Of course, government authorities do not like that much salt going into the bread and have tried to limit how much salt bakers can use there. But there is no doubt that adding enough salt is critical to get great tasting bread at home.

We hope you find these homemade bread tips useful!

Hamilton Beach is a kitchen appliance company offering a large selection of toasters, blenders and slow cookers as well as an extensive recipe collection