Sitecore layout not found when trying to access home page

 Error:

The layout for the requested document was not found

Most likely causes:

The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) may have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.

What you can try:

Go back to the previous page

Go to the start page

Additional Information:

Requested URL: /

Requested Layout: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

Requested Device: Default

If the page you are trying to display exists, please check that an appropriate prefix has been added to the IgnoreUrlPrefixes setting in the web.config.

Cause:

This happened when I published my HelixBase project. This project has a site definition patch and that patch points to /sitecore/content/MyProjectBase path in the content tree. This path didn't exist in Sitecore since I didn't serialize the Sitecore items specific for my project. 

So, this scenario is applicable anytime when you have a site definition that is not able to find a Sitecore content item:

In my case, I didn't have /sitecore/content/MyProjectBase in my Sitecore content tree