Everything you ever wanted to know about bread!

Look at this lascivious pair of doughy beauties, fresh from the oven! How could you resist them?

Home made bread is so satisfying, delicious and addictive. It takes time and patience to learn the knack, but these two loaves only took me 15 mins of actual work, the rest of the time you can get on with other things. Isn't gorgeous fresh bread worth 15 minutes of your time each week?!

Healthy and Cheap!

Home made bread is so much better for you than mass-produced stuff from the supermarket, which is saturated with yeast and preservatives. It's also much cheaper! I recently calculated that if I buy basic ingredients from the supermarket, my loaf costs 52p  - which includes the cost of having the oven on for half an hour. If you cook other things at the same time, or make two loaves at once, it's even more economical. (Today I made two loafs plus baked some eggs for my lunch, might give that recipe another time!)

Storage

Some people complain that home bread goes off too quickly. I really don't find this to be the case, so long as you store bread properly. Since it takes me a week to eat a loaf, once it's baked I cut it down the middle and pop one half in a plastic bag in the freezer. The other half I either wrap in brown paper, or just put it in a plastic bag. It keeps perfectly fine for 3-4 days, which is more than long enough.

You can buy special reusable bread bags, they work very well. But don't put bread in the fridge: the cold makes starch molecules crystallise and dry out, so while your bread won't go mouldy, it goes hard. You're better off freezing half a loaf and just defrosting it to room temperature when you need it.

Breadmakers

I've owned a couple of breadmakers but they

invariably languish in a cupboard. While they take some of the manual effort out of bread making, to me they always produce slightly odd loaves that aren't quite the right shape, or taste, or colour, and often have that awkward hole in the bottom. The only effort they really save you is ten minutes of kneading, since you still have to measure out the ingredients, wait for it to cook, and wash the pan afterwards!

I genuinely think they end up discouraging people from making their own bread, because the results from them aren't good enough to justify the effort.

Bread tins

You don't need a tin to make bread, but investing in a good quality one will last you a long time and produce a better loaf. The two loafs above are a good example.

The fatter one was made in a cheap tin I bought a long time ago. It's shallow and has rounded sides, so bread I make in it often mushrooms over the top, producing awkward mushroom-shaped slices like on the right. It also has a poor-quality non stick finish which has disintegrated after a lot of use. The loaf just above was made in my high-sided 3lb tin which was more expensive, but produces a sharp-edged, professional loaf, with much more regular slices.

Simple White Bread Recipe

This is a simple, tried and tested recipe for a bog standard, one rise loaf. I've experimented with no-knead recipes, long slow rising and other fancy methods, but I've settled with this very simple method which gives great results from minimal effort. You can have a loaf ready in under two hours - and almost all of that time you can put your feet up.

I've tried all kinds of flours from artisan heritage-variety stone-ground to supermarket basic. They all give their own flavours, but don't be afraid of buying the economy supermarket own-brand. Even the cheap stuff will produce a great loaf compared with any ordinary white sliced.

Fresh or activated yeast are said to give a better flavour but instant yeast is more reliable. You can buy it in 7g sachets which saves weighing, but the most economical way is to buy a yeast in a small tin. Once opened, store it in the fridge to keep it fresh.

• 500 g white bread flour
• 7 g fast action dried yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 300 ml warm water

1. Measure the flour into a bowl. Make a hollow in the flour on one side of the bowl, and measure the dried yeast into it.
2. Dissolve the sugar and salt in the water, add the oil and stir.
3. Make a hollow in the opposite side of the bowl from the yeast, and pour in the water mixture. Start mixing into the flour until it's all well combined. I usually start with a fork and finish with my hands.
4. At this stage I often cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave it for 5-10 minutes. During this time the flour soaks up the water, which stops the mixture from being too sticky.
5. Oil your hands and a surface. I try not to add flour at this stage, since you want your bread to stay moist and soft.
6. Knead the dough for ten minutes. What you're doing is stretching the dough so it forms gluten strands. There are lots of different techniques; I recommend browsing Youtube for videos. I alternate with a few methods:
• Grab one end of the dough nearest to you in one hand, then with the heel of your other hand, gently push the other end away from you. Fold over, and repeat.
• Stretch out into a long sausage, roll up the end one turn, then gently stretch it out. Repeat until you've rolled it all up back into a long sausage, then repeat.
• With a length of dough, hold one end, lift up the whole thing and thwack it against your surface. Repeat. The dough will stretch and lengthen, but don't let it get so long that it snaps!


7. After ten minutes of abuse, the dough should be ready. Test it by putting some flour on your finger and gently pressing into the dough. If it's done, the dough should spring back.
8. You're now ready to shape the loaf. The dough will have aborbed all the oil from your kneading surface, so now you need to dust the surface with flour.
9. Cute the loaf in half. With one half, pinch a flap of dough on the edge of the lump, pull it out and over into the middle of the ball, and stick it down. Rotate the dough slightly and keep repeating until the dough is shaped into a tight ball. The bottom of the surface tension on the dough ball will give you a good finish. Repeat with the other half.
10. Pop both balls into an oiled tin, with the smooth side upwards. If you have a deep tin, cover it with cling film. Alternatively I put the tin into a plastic bag, wrapped so it leaves a tent over the top, but with the plastic tucked tightly under the tin. You want to keep the air and moisture inside.
11. Leave to rise for approximately an hour or more until it doubles in size. In a warm place it will rise more quickly. Slow rising at cool temperatures will develop a slightly better flavour.
12. After 50 minutes, switch on the oven to 220C (fan) to preheat.
13. Once risen, uncover the loaf and slash the top lengthways with a sharp knife. At this stage you can glaze the top by either dusting with flour, or brushing with milk, melted butter, beaten egg or egg white.
14. Bake on high heat for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 180C.
15. (Optional) To crisp up the crust, at this stage pop the loaf out of the tin and return to the oven shelf for another 10 minutes.
16. Leave to cool. It's tempting to slice straight away, but the bread carries on cooking inside so shouldn't be sliced til it's cool.

Variations

Replacing the sugar with honey and the oil with butter gives a much richer flavour.

I often mix half wholemeal and half white flour (like the ones pictured), which is the same recipe but needs an extra 25 ml of water.