Woods Creation

Home made bread

There are plenty of recipes on home baking for bread, every packet of bread flour has a recipe on the back and I tried loads and loads until I worked out the best way for me to make bread.

There is a lot of variation in the recipes, some add sugar for super thick soft crusts (hampers the yeast in my experience), some use only one type of flour and cooking times can vary quite considerably. But this is my recipe for a consistent stable loaf that gives us smaller end slices for toast after the cereals at breakfast and nice big middle section slices for yummy sandwiches for lunch.

Something to note if your just starting out that I found very fustrating is that if you have made a mistake somewhere along the way you will not find out until the end, when it is too late and you get rubbish sandwiches for lunch the next day.

If it goes wrong don't despair, stick with it, as experience is the best tutor.

Ingredients

• 250 gms white super strong premium bread flour
• 250 gms whole meal strong bread flour
• 1.5 tsp fine sea salt
• 1.5 tsp fast action yeast
• 300 ml warm water made with 225 cold and 75 recently boiled.
• 2 tbs of quality olive oil (optional)

I sometimes split the whole meal with granary, mixed seed flour or for the best flavour, Spelt flour. You can of course use just white flour but I like to look after my bowels, and my kids preffer the brown bread.

I find that slightly warm water is easier to work with and takes less effort, but be careful as too hot will kill the yeast.

For a smaller loaf use 400 gms of flour, 1 tsp of salt and yeast, 1 tbs of oil and 250 ml of water.
The smaller quanities are perfect for making pizza bases (2 thin crusts 30 cm), just roll and stretch the base out after the first rise.

Getting Started

Mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl with your hand in a claw shape to aggregate it all together.
Add the yeast to the water and mix it up quickly with a good spoon to create a milky solution.

Pour the yeasty water into the flour bowl and, if you want, add the olive oil. I find this gives a nicer crust and keeps the crumb moist.
Mix quickly with your trusty spoon and gather it up by hand when its too clumped up.

Turn out the mixture onto a clean surface, it should be kinda dry with unmixed crumbly bit dropping out as you start to knead. But don't worry it will turn from dry to sticky (keep it moving to stay out of trouble) to soft and erm, doughy.

Form it into a rough ball, push down and away to stretch and tear the dough then fold it back over. Use your other hand to hold onto the back of it as you stretch it out. If you have measured the ingredients well the mixture will turn into a pleasingly pliant soft dough in a few minutes.
This does take a bit of effort however but its a nice bit of exercise for your triceps and shoulders.

At a good pace kneading should take around 6 to 8 minutes, anything over 10 means your going too slow or your over doing it and wasting your time. I stick a timer on before mixing to ensure I only work the dough for 6 minutes.

Make sure there are no unmixed ingredients in the bowl and chuck the dough into it, then I personally just place a dinner plate on top to stop it drying out while rising.

Place the bowl in a draught free place at room temperature, mine goes on the (cool) oven top as it bang in the center of my kitchen away from the window and leave for around 60 to 90 minutes until it has doubled in volume.

Flour a baking sheet heavily to create a nice bed for the dough.
When it is risen scrape the dough out by holding the bowl upside down at a 45 degree angle and working around the dough, letting gravity help you.

Then give it a quick but thorough knead to 'knock out' any large gas pockets and shape the dough by rolling it with your hands, this whole process should take only one or two minutes.

Place it down on the floured sheet and dust with more flour then make some slashes about one centimeter deep very quickly with a sharp thin knife.

Cooking

Time for the second rise, I just throw a clean tea towel over the dough and put it back on my oven top.

Now the timers start. First off its fifteen minutes. Then I pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees for ten minutes (I have a modern fan oven, you may have to experiment here a bit, the target temperature is around 200 degrees).

I place a large deep metal roasting tray on the bottom shelf of my oven which will work as a steam bath when it has been pre-heated.

When the oven is nice and hot get your dough in (more experimenting, I found the best position for my oven was right in the center at the back directly in front of the fan).
Carefully but quickly pour about 300ml full of hot tap water into the roasting tray and gently shut the door.
This will make enough steam inside to help the loaf crust stay moist while it's still rising, giving you a larger rise.

You will be able to see within the first 4 to 5 minutes the bread starting to rise (that is if you have a glass door, don't open the oven door until its cooked or you will loose the steamy heat and get a flat dry loaf).

A nice round 30 minutes later and get that boyo out.
The loaf should have a lovely dark crust and have that hollow sound when you tap the bottom. Which is always satisfying.
Oh yes and don't forget the smell of hot fresh bread.

Measuring out

Mixing gather up

Kneading - stretch away

Kneading - Fold back over

My rising method

Knock it back

The second rise

Mmm.. Lovely bread

I rest it on a wire rack that I raise up on some coffee cups so that it has plenty of room for the air to circulate.

The wire racks are usually only a centimeter away from the surface and I was getting concave bases to my bread caused by steamy heat exchange between the 190 degree bread and the work surface.

There you go, throw your tea towel back over it after 10 minutes to stop the crust turning into a pallet shredder and scrape excess flour off when its's cooled.