Bank Holiday Bread

For my birthday one of my friends got me How to Avoid a Soggy Bottom by Gerard Baker which is filled with all the GBBO baking tips and secrets.

 

Not only did she give me that but she also made me an enormous cornflake tart (one of my favourites) so this morning I cut myself a hunk of tart and started flicking through.

It's divided into cake & biscuits, pastry, desserts and flavours & fillings, but it was the bread section that particularly grabbed me. We have a bread machine but I thought I'd try and make the "Simple White Loaves" all by myself.



To make 2 large loaves:

800g strong white flour
2 tsp. salt
1 sachet or 7g yeast
550 ml tepid water

Oven: 220 C

Put all of the flour in a bowl and if, like me, you are using dried yeast, mix the salt in with the flour thoroughly.

In a separate bowl mix the yeast with a little water until it forms a paste not unlike, for lack of a better description, sorry, the consistency of a face mask.

Then add this to the rest of your tepid water and pour into the bowl of flour.

 

 

After mixing all the ingredients well together, turn out the dough onto a clean surface and get kneading. Resolve any anger management issues by pummelling that dough. You'll have to knead for 10-15 minutes so not only are you making a pair of yummy loaves, you're also getting a workout.
Then pop it into a bowl, cover it in a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place until it doubles in size.

Once its doubled, give it another quick knead to make it nice and smooth, then divide into two.

Roll it with your hands to make a fat sausage and bring the long edges in to make a crease down the centre.

 

Pop it into a greased bread tin with the crease side at the bottom.

Then put it back into the warm place for another hour or until it has doubled.

Then sprinkle your loaf with flour,

 

And score a line about 1/2 deep along the centre of the loaf. 

 Bung your loaves into the oven at 220 C/425 F then after 20 minutes, turn them around so they bake evenly and reduce the temperature to 180 C/350 F and leave for another 20-25 minutes.

Test to see if they are done by turning them out and knocking on the bottom, if they sound hollow, you're done!

 The recipe says to allow them to cool, but I think that warm bread is the best bread.

 

Especially with lashings of butter...