I’m going to show you how to make bread today, very satisfying and very simple to do. Before I do that, I’m going to do a little plug, because I write a blog every week. That blog is on undergroundcookeryschool.com. So you can generally find recipes and restaurants I’ve been to. It’s just sort of food related stuff really. So feel free to have a look at that. It’s there for you.
What I’m going to show you to make now is a loaf of bread. I’ve got 500 grams of very strong bread flour in here. Look for very strong bread flour in the supermarket. I’ve got some tepid water. I’ve got a sachet of yeast, and I’m going to put the whole lot, it’s about seven grams, into the water with some olive oil. I’m not going to use all of this salt, but I’m going to use probably about half of it. It’s about seven or eight grams in there. Give it a good old mix.
What that’s doing is that’s going to wake that yeast up. It’s going to feed it. It’s going to get it active. Now I’m going to create a little well in the middle and pour all of that mixture in there, but by gradual degrees. Just mix that around. What will then happen is once those two sets of ingredients, i.e. the flour and the liquid, have been incorporated — there we go — I’m going to knead.
Right. I’m going to just empty the contents out on to the table, and I’m going to bring them together. A lot of people, you know, there are bread machines that you see, by people like Morphy Richards. There are other companies, I think, that do them. I think they’re a waste of time, frankly. This is all you need to do. It’s quite satisfying as well, just having a really nice knead, and also it’s just lovely warm texture. It’s quite comforting. I’m just going to press on with this for about ten minutes, maybe, until everything comes together and we get a nice smooth dough. Use the back of you hand just to do that.
Right. That dough has now come together really nicely. It’s quite pliable, as you can see, and what I’m going to do is just place that in a bowl. It’s probably good to just put a little bit of olive oil in the bottom or any sort of grease so it doesn’t stick to the bottom. But that’s going to go in there for the first proof, and I reckon probably about an hour. So I’m just going to cover with cling film.
Right. Well, that’s been in there for about an hour, and it’s really blown up. All I’m going to do now is just knock it back. Let me just explain a little bit about the yeast. What we did is the yeast was dead, and we gave it some food and woke it up. What happened was it really sort of got going, and it’s sort of blown the bread up. We’ve really got it to work. But what we’re saying to the yeast is, “We’re going to make you work a lot harder. So we’re going to send you back down to the size that you were.” That’s to say to our loaf of bread. What’s going to happen is we’re going to make it double up again in size. We’re going to put it in the oven. So it’s going to continue to grow as it bakes in the oven. But that’s ready for its second proof.
Now what I was planning to do is bake it in this and halfway through realized that, actually, I’ve only got half a recipe. But, actually, there’s a very real lesson to be learned in that because if something like that happens, don’t worry about it. That’s going to double up in size, and in about an hour’s time we’re going to stick it in the oven and then bake it up for about 25 minutes. Have a lovely loaf of bread that won’t be perfect bread shape. But who cares?
Right. Look at the size of that. That’s really grown. I’m just going to snatch a little bit, stick it in the oven, about 20 to 25 minutes on as high as it will go, and we should have a lovely loaf of bread. There we go.
Right. Let’s have a look at our loaf. Get it open. Look at that. There’s nothing more satisfying than baking your own bread. We’re going to give that a rest for five minutes, and then we’re going to slice it out.
Now you know how to bake a loaf of bread. Like I said before, if I had had it in a loaf tin, it would be a lovely loaf. But you want to let it rest for a few minutes before slicing it. But there you go, how to make bread. Enjoy.
Thanks for watching. If you entered a review on either Google or Facebook for me, thank you. Your name gets entered into here, and if I pull it out, you win a free pasta machine. So this episode’s winner is Tina Fordham. Thanks Tina. I’ll be sending that to you fairly soon.
See you in about three weeks’ time.
