Week 42 - The humble white loaf

After watching many many episodes of The Great British Bake Off, listening to Paul Hollywood comment on loaves, baps and baguettes I thought it was about time that I tried my hand at making a proper loaf. Now I have made bread before, in week 31 I made Beer Bread which was GREAT but a bit of a cheat because it didn’t use yeast and also didn’t require kneading. 

This past weekend I started a week long holiday in the Scottish Highlands with my better half Dave. This meant that my usual baking time at the weekend went out of the window with having to pack, tidying the house and then heading off on our road trip/mini break up north. Luckily we booked a self catering holiday cottage on the Isle of Skye so I decided to pack my scale and loaf tin and bring the baking challenge on holiday.

This morning I was up before the sun to start the task of making a classic white loaf before we headed out for a day of touristing. I searched online and found several variations to the plain white loaf but decided to stick to the reliable BBC Good Food website for my first proper venture into the world of yeast, proving and knocking back. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread

Ingredients

• 500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
• 2 tsp salt
• 7g sachet fast-action yeast
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 300ml water

Method

1. Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl (I found a tip online which said you should put the salt and yeast at opposite sides of the bowl when you start mixing because the salt can kill the yeast. I don’t know if it really makes a difference but I gave it a go). Make a well in the centre, then add the oil and water, and mix well. If the dough seems a little stiff, add 1-2 tbsp water, mix well then tip onto a lightly floured work surface and knead. I had a look at some YouTube videos of kneading techniques to help get me started, there are LOADS on there and it was super helpful to actually see how to work the dough.
2. Once the dough is satin-smooth (no idea what this means! After a bit more googling I decided to knead the dough for about 10 minutes.  Paul Hollywood and Jamie Oliver both have recipes suggesting 8-10 minutes of kneading so I just went with that and hoped for the best. I will have to work on my biceps before I make bread again, you really do need some guns to properly knead for 10 minutes straight) place it in a lightly oiled bowl (I had to improvise a little as the holiday cottage doesn’t quite come with a full set of baking equipment so I just used a roasting tin and covered it with a plastic microwave protector dish and cling film instead of using a bowl).
3. Leave to rise for 1 hour until doubled in size or place in the fridge overnight. This is the first of two proving stages where you leave the bread to think about becoming a loaf and let the magic scientific bit work on making the dough rise.
4. Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Knock back the dough, then gently mould the dough into a ball (I decided to use a loaf tin instead of doing the freestyle shape on a baking tray). Place it on the baking parchment to prove for a further hour until doubled in size.
5. Heat oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. Dust the loaf with flour and cut a cross about 6cm long into the top of the loaf with a sharp knife. Bake for 25-30 mins (my loaf was in for more like 40 minutes because I don’t think the oven was quite hot enough and I purposefully left it a bit longer to make sure it was cooked all the way through) until golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath. Cool on a wire rack.

Transforming the dough into the loaf

As you can see from the photos the loaf came up lovely. It is super crusty but has a nice texture, especially when you toast it. The only thing I would say is that it’s a tiny bit bland, I think it could do with either some more salt or a little bit of sugar (lots of bread recipes seem to add a bit of sugar).

Overall I would have to say I really enjoyed making bread, the only thing is you have to be really patient, something which isn’t really my strong point. Even though the mixing and kneading only took about 15-20 minutes the 2 hours of proving with a bit of knocking back (not in the dating sense, its just when you knead the dough again to get rid of all the air from the first proving stage) in the middle was a bit of a drag. Thankfully I am on holiday so have all the time in the world which is a novelty but if I was doing this as a normal weekend bake I might try the overnight method to save hanging around watching the dough rise for two hours.

The view from the cottage helped to pass the time while the bread was proving.

Arty bread shot!

Now that I am over the first hurdle of making bread I might just try a different type of loaf for week 43’s bake as well, maybe something flavoured......uuummmm decisions decisions!!

I will keep you all posted, happy baking x Linds x