There's a reason bakeries are so prevalent in many areas. That "squish it" part is a lot of work, and you have to wait long enough that it's not available for breakfast. Making it yourself counts as hard to obtain every day.

I bake my own bread. It's very little work. The problem is the time commitment.

You need to be there for a large part of the process. The first mixing and kneading takes the longest, maybe 5 minutes. After that every 20 minutes you need to come and fold for a minute 3 times. After that, let it rest for 8-16h (depending on dough temperature, amount of yeast, environment temperature). Then you do another 2 minutes of work. Half an hour later preheat the oven. Half an hour later put it in.

Doing this over night you save a lot of time. I.e. you can start at 8pm and finish by 8am-9am if you wake up at 6am. But a lot of people can't stay home that long in the morning.

So it's very little work in essence, but it's spread over a whole day. Perfect if you work remotely. Takes less time than most coffee breaks. But you need to be home.

There is a compromise that you can do if you are short for time. Buy a bread maker with a timer. You add the ingredients before going to bed and it will bake overnight and will be ready in time for breakfast. It is not the same thing as hand made sourdough but it is a good compromise.

Yes, I recommend this, too, if you're in some American bread desert and short on time.

If you have time on the weekends only you can do amazing bread and freeze it. I prepped it on Friday or Saturday evenings, baked it the next morning. Cut and froze it and had enough for the week. That's how I survived in Canada.

I have a mixer. I made pizza dough the other day in about 10 minutes. It takes a while to stretch into pizza and add toppings but, if you're just making bread, that'd be ready to bake by morning. Are you actually trying to argue that bread, ine if the simplest things to make and the bedrock of civilization for thousands of years, is too difficult to make?

I didn't say too difficult, no.

But there are so many super-local bakers around the world. Single neighborhoods are willing to pay full-time wages to a baker just so they don't have to make their own bread. Explain why they do that if daily bread-making isn't a pain in the ass.

Or is this just that you don't think I should use the word "hard" to mean "pain in the ass"? It comes out of your money/time budget either way.

There's a bit of a conflict between your post and it's grandparent.

> Freshly baked bread can be hard to obtain in many parts of the US. For me if I wanted fresh baked bread every day and not make it myself, I'd be looking at like 40-60 minutes of extra time per day if I drive there every day.

and

> But there are so many super-local bakers around the world. Single neighborhoods are willing to pay full-time wages to a baker just so they don't have to make their own bread. Explain why they do that if daily bread-making isn't a pain in the ass.

Which I have two thoughts on, first, I'm pretty sure most people are buying bread at the grocery store. So, the availability of fresh bread (which is also frequently available in the grocery store bakery) has more to do with lack of demand than it does with lack of availability. It seems like the convenience of pre-sliced bread that doesn't go bad in a couple days is just vastly preferred over fresh bread.

As for the local bakeries, I'd argue that those bakeries exist because they bake a variety of bread (and cakes) that are more involved than simple bread. I'd be shocked if the majority of the money they make wasn't from specialty items with wide margins.

The top level point I'm trying to get across has to do with the article and top level comment though, fresh bread is available to anybody with an extra few minutes every couple days. And, frankly, if you're doing any amount of cooking during the day, you can do it at the same time. There's usually some down time in a recipe that you could sneak in throwing a few ingredients into a mixer. Or put it together while watching whatever netflix show you're watching or podcast you're listening to.

Bread was certainly much more work but a stand mixer is not that expensive, especially compared to the amount of time it will save you if you cook semi-frequently (and even better if you make the bread you eat frequently). There are a plethora of modern conveniences that make bread so much easier to make than it used to be (and it was already pretty easy...).

> Which I have two thoughts on, first, I'm pretty sure most people are buying bread at the grocery store. So, the availability of fresh bread (which is also frequently available in the grocery store bakery) has more to do with lack of demand than it does with lack of availability. It seems like the convenience of pre-sliced bread that doesn't go bad in a couple days is just vastly preferred over fresh bread.

No my point is that going to the grocery store daily or near daily for fresh bread adds like an hour of time to my day, because there's no very close grocery store. Not even talking about a dedicated bakery

Right, where my wife grew up she could just walk out the front door and go like a block or two, and there'd be fresh everything - produce, baked goods, whatever. That doesn't exist for a lot of people in the US.

I do sympathise: not only is kneading by hand something I can absolutely believe people can't be bothered with after a long day at work, but also I can't even remember when I last tried even though I have access to an electric mixer.

That said, a DIY/health POV, what's given here (no yeast) can be relatively quick.

Bread probably isn't very healthy anyway, so it's okay to cut it out of your diet.

I can only recommend flour, water, salt, yeast by Ken Forkish if you want to get amazing results.

However there is some amount of time commitment that I think might be hard if you don't have the luxury of working from home or being/having a stay at home partner.

The second best thing might be using a bread baking machine, that takes most of the work from you. It doesn't taste as good, but it's similarly healthy I'd guess.

Most people prefer leavened bread, which is far more involved that your recipe.

That’s a myth: leavened bread doesn’t need much more than that recipe. “No knead bread” was a craze 20 years ago in some circles when people (re)learned that all it takes is a bit of time to rise.

Predicted in the Foundation series, except we don't get cool spaceships and such.

Real bread lasts a week, if stored appropriately. Though self-baking with sourdough is definitely not an option for everyone.

You can mix this recipe and "bake" in in a frying pan in minutes.

A tiny bit of practice and perspective change to get something you like and you can have fresh bread daily for the rest of your life.