Bread

Bread

How to make your own bread without a bread machine

INGREDIENTS

PREPARATION

I use shop-bought sliced white bread for breadcrumbs, toast and croutons, but all the bread I eat as bread I bake myself. It is easy to do, and does not require much work, although you do have to be around for some hours to keep an eye on things. Bread machines are very useful, but they rely on well-defined recipes and fixed times so it is hard to use them to experiment. I don't like tall narrow loaves with a hole in the bottom either. But if you can't be around for 3-4 hours while the yeast works they're invaluable. So I have a bread machine, but I don't use it much.

Although these recipes will work with ordinary plain wheat flour you will have far better results if you use "strong" or "bread" flour which is milled from "hard" wheat, contains more gluten, and makes a far better dough. Bread made from 100% wholemeal flour tends to be heavy and for everyday brown bread I use 50/50 white and wholemeal. If you are making bread for someone who is wheat gluten intolerant use spelt flour - spelt is a primitive wheat and its gluten very rarely causes intolerance problems. Mixing 20% spelt flour with ordinary strong bread flour also gives a more elastic dough if you are making plaited loaves.

The proportion of flour to water (milk) is quite critical, so do weigh the flour and use an accurate measure for the liquid. (I actually weigh the liquid rather than using an somewhat inaccurate measuring jug.)

Oil helps the bread stay fresh but gives a slightly more cake-like texture. If you're eating it all at once you don't need any, but if you're keeping it a short time 15 ml is a good idea. I use my bread over 5-7 days and find 45-60 ml oil prevents staleness, even in Summer. Milk powder (or milk instead of the water) gives a slightly richer bread but is not necessary.

Fresh yeast, IMHO, makes bread that tastes nicer than dried yeast, but the rising is less predictable so fresh yeast is less suitable for bread machines. It is also slightly harder to obtain, although most craft bakers will sell you a couple of ounces for a few tens of pennies. My local Tesco supermarket actually gives away fresh yeast to home bakers as a cheap promotion - but you have to ask, they don't advertise it.

Mix the flour, salt and oil, and the skim milk powder and any other additional ingredients thoroughly in a bowl. Mix the sugar and yeast in a cup. (If using dried yeast add 50 ml of the warm water or milk, too.) Stir until you have a liquid paste (with fresh yeast and dry sugar this is hard at first and then, quite suddenly, it liquifies). Add this to the rest of the warm water, stir, and add to the flour mixture.

Knead to a dough and continue kneading for at least 10 minutes, ideally 20 minutes. Good bread is critically dependent on thorough kneading and if you do not knead sufficiently the texture will be poor. Use the dough hook on a food processor if you've got access to one, or use your bread machine just for kneading. Of course, if you do knead by hand you'll develop powerful lower arm muscles and your hands will be beautifully clean afterwards. (It really is a good idea if they're beautifully clean beforehand, too.)

Cover the dough and leave it in a warm place to rise (let it expand to at least double its original volume, ideally to 3 times its original volume - this is known as "proving". Knead briefly to reduce the volume of the proved dough and put it into one or more greased bread tins - it should fill the tins no more than half full. Allow the dough to rise again until the tin is full and beginning to overlap its edges. Bake for 25-30 minutes in a hot oven (200-225°C). Remove from the tins and allow to cool on a rack.

Once you can make this basic bread you can experiment. The dough will make buns:- after proving you roll balls of dough about 3 cm diameter and place them on a greased tray. Let them rise to about 4.5 cm diameter and bake in the same temperature oven but for a slightly shorter time. They should also cool on a rack, not on the tray.

Or you can use the dough as a pizza base - after it has proved roll it out to about 1 cm thick (this is tricky) and cut circles. Place them on baking paper on a steel tray or directly on a silicone baking tray and allow them to rise for 15-20 minutes before covering them with tomato paste, cheese, and whatever other pizza toppings you fancy. (I like anchovies and pepperoni.) Bake at 230-250°C for 20-25 minutes and serve at once.

You can replace up to 40% of the flour with other sources of starch (no more or the quality of the dough will deteriorate for lack of the gluten in the flour):- rolled oats for oat bread; lentil flour (or mashed baked beans!) for pulse bread; maize meal for corn bread; rye flour for rye bread; mashed banana for banana bread; poppy seeds (probably no more than 20% of these), or what have you?

If you sauté finely chopped onions or garlic in the oil (or in butter instead of the oil) before adding it (and the onions or garlic) to the flour, you will have onion bread or garlic bread. Alternatively make normal dough and then dip small pieces (balls about 2 cm dia) into chopped garlic cooked in butter or oil, put the pieces into the bread tin and then press them down befoe allowing the loaf to rise and be baked in the usual way. There will be layers of garlic within the bread and you will have my late friend Joan Olson's “Garlic Bubble Loaf” which is sinfully delicious.

If you add dried fruit (raisins, currents, sultanas, candied peel or whatever - probably about 100-200 gm), and possibly a little extra sugar, you will have a fruit loaf (this one is definitely better if you do use the skim milk powder). And there are innumerable other possibilities.....

This is a recipe page on the James Bryant (G4CLF) Web-site.
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