Bread Making, Part 1… which means I will have to make a Part 2

If you’re looking for a sourdough recipe this isn’t the one for you. I have made sourdough in the past but I’ve never had great success. In fact I have recently tried to resurrect my sourdough starter and it isn’t going great, so I think I’m going to have to make a new one. Instead I’m going to teach you how to make a loaf like this:

I will admit that I panic bought flour when I saw that there was none left on the supermarket shelves. I went to one of my favourite online shops (bakery bits) and helped myself to a decent amount of flour – about 5kgs of different types (I didn’t go wild). 5 kilos will make 10 decent sized loaves, and when you have your whole family of four adults at home, it’s normally a loaf a day. Then the butcher we used casually mentioned he had got hold of some bread flour, 16kg sacks to be exact. So I got one of those as well, and I have been making bread for the last three weeks.

If like me you managed to get hold of flour and yeast (a rare commodity I know, I managed to get 500g from a wholesaler), but you don’t know how to actually make bread then I have made a video for you… Now bear in mine my phone doesn’t make the best camera, and currently it’s broken, hence the voice over rather than me actually speaking. I’ve made a few more, and maybe at some point I’ll actually manage to find a way to angle the phone so I get my face in the shot as well, although that’s not really a necessity.

As you can see it’s the one video on my brand new youtube channel, but I am hoping to do a few more. I have quite a bit of free time at the moment, but like a lot of people I’m struggling a bit with inertia. I’m sure I’ll plough on through it though.

Ingredients

500g bread flour – strong white/strong brown/wholemeal/malted/rye etc, you can use a mixture.

10g salt – salt is a flavour enhancer, without the bread will taste bland. However, salt inhibits yeast so if you add too much then the bread won’t rise. Forget it, and the bread will rise too much.

7-10g fast action yeast – this can be added straight to the flour. If you just have dried yeast or fresh yeast then you will need to activate it beforehand with a little water and a pinch of sugar.

1 tbsp sugar (optional) – sugar feeds the yeast and makes it work a bit quicker. Yeast is a living organise, it works by breaking down glucose and giving out carbon dioxide as a by product, making the bread rise.

320-350ml water/milk – I add milk to give a softer texture to the final product, however water will do just fine.

I’m planning on sharing a recipe for soda bread soon as well, a good alternative if you don’t fancy sourdough and you don’t have any yeast. Also in the works now that I have my catering pack of yeast is showing you all the different things that may go wrong with your bread and how you fix it.

Let me know if you have any other requests for videos and recipes.

RAJ