Bread

Bread and I have something of a love-hate relationship. I love to eat it and love the idea of making it, but I hate that it always turns out pretty rubbish. But as part of my 'let's not be lazy or scared of stuff' attitude to 2012, I felt like I ought to try again. So I bought myself a loaf tin (apparently up to now all the places we rented must have randomly had a loaf tin there!) and looked for a recipe. In the end I went with one from my stepdad.


Now, my stepdad is not the most open, helpful person you might ever meet, but there are certain things that he is very good at and enjoys doing, one of which happens to be making bread. I was still surprised though at how excited he was when I asked him for his recipe; he remembered almost all of it by heart and merrily gave me little tips and checked the temperatures just to be sure. It was really sweet and made me realise that all most people want is for someone to show an interest in something they care about and recognise what they're good at.


So the recipe he gave me (for a 2lb loaf) was:
400g strong white flour
200g wholemeal flour
Tsp salt
Handful of golden linseeds
Other seeds (pumpkin, sunflower etc) if desired
Yeast as per packet instructions (except that he uses honey instead of sugar to feed it and I think this makes it taste slightly nuttier and more interesting)
Tbsp of oil (preferably groundnut as it has no real taste to it)


Make the yeast and leave to froth until there is at least 1-2cm of froth on top
Mix the flour, salt and seeds together in a bowl then add the yeast
Add the oil and then enough cool water to bind but not make it wet (around 300ml maybe?)
Knead the dough until really stretchy. My parents use a Kenwood mixer but I did it by hand, partly because I have no such wonder, but mostly because that's the bit about bread-making that I especially love. It does hurt a bit if you have long nails and the dough gets stuck underneath them though!
Cover the bowl with cling film, leaving plenty of air in there, and leave to rise for around an hour, so it about doubles in size
Beat the dough back and put into a greased tin
Leave to rise again, until it reaches easily to the top of the tin, if not overflowing a bit
Bake at 220C (gas 7) for 10 minutes, then turn down to 190C (gas 5) for 25 minutes until golden on top
When you take it out, if you tap the bottom of the bread it should sound hollow, otherwise you might want to cook it for slightly longer


After my stepdad was so nice about the recipe, it felt like a bit of a burden to make it turn out well. And actually, it kind of did in the end. There were a couple of setbacks though. Firstly, I thought my loaf tin was too small, so I split the dough in half and baked half of it as a sort of tray loaf, so we have two quite small bits of bread, tasty nonetheless.


Secondly, it took aaaages to rise. This has always been my problem before. We don't tend to have the heating on at home, and if we do it's set to somewhere around 15 or 16C (which my other half says feels too warm to him but we've agreed that any lower would be unbearable for me). So after the usual hour that recipes suggest, my dough is sort of slightly bigger but definitely not fluffy or doubled. Usually I just give up and bake it anyway but I really do want to understand where I'm going wrong and try new things. So I did a bit of googling and basically found that yeast does not die in cold (in fact, you can leave it in the fridge overnight quite happily) but heat about 50C will kill it. So I thought it was worth trying just leaving it as long as it took.


When I got up the next day (yes, a whole day later), it looked ok so I whacked it in the oven. It didn't look great when I first took it out but I was really impressed with the taste and even he said it was good, so I think I'll try to make a loaf or two a weekend ritual from now on, along with cake(s).