On the advice of the people whose house we are looking after, in an act of blatant anarchistic rebellion, this week I baked my own bread! I’ve had a bread maker for a couple of years and have been using that regularly, hardly ever buying bread, but I’ve never actually made it myself. Apart from the fact that it is pretty enjoyable and rewarding and that hot bread straight from the oven with just a little butter is one of the nicest things in the world you could read this post from January for a few more reasons why it’s a good idea to make your own.

I was a little worried for some reason about making bread. All this kneading, resting, rising, blah blah makes it all seem quite complicated, hard work and likely to end in disaster. So we started simple, just made plain white loaves and I have to say it was surprisingly simple and they turned out pretty well.

Basic Loaf

700g unbleached strong white bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
425ml tepid water
7g sachet of dried yeast

Mix the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl, make a well and pour in the water.

Work the mixture with your hands until it comes together to make a ball of dough that leaves the sides of the bowl clean. If it is too sticky add more flour, if it is too dry and crumbly add more water a little at a time..

Lightly flour a work surface and knead the dough for around 10 minutes. To do this stretch it away from you, then fold back onto itself, turn and repeat.

After 10 minutes it was apparently meant to be “very elastic and silky smooth, and stretch to paper-like almost transparent thinness” . It was however just a big blob which snapped when I pulled it. Hmm. Nevermind, I thought, it’ll do. This bit must get better with practice. At this stage we split our dough so we could make one loaf each, but you can just keep it whole if you want a bigger loaf.

Now, put the dough back in the bowl and cover and let rise until doubled in size. This will take about one to one and a half hours.

When it’s done punch the dough a couple of times to distribute the air and tuen it out onto a floured surface.

Gently kneed and shape the dough into a rough ball. Try not to work it too much as this will lose some of the rise in it. Just roughly shape it to how you want the final loaf to be.

Put the loaf on a lightly greased baking sheet and slip it into a plastic bag to rise in a warm place. It’s best to seal the bag somehow as the yeast likes a warm humid environment at this stage. Leave for 45 mins to 1 hour.

Uncover the loaf and slash the top with a knife. Bake in for around 35minutes at 220.

To test if it’s cooked, turn it over and tap with your knuckles, it should sound hollow, if it sounds heavy and dead return to the oven for 5 more minutes.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.

This is the bread we used for the Pan con Tomate the other night, it was really good for that. All in all it was a successful bread making session and I’ll definitely be doing it again sometime.