Make it even easier - āNo-Knead Breadā. All YOU do is mix the ingredients together and wait until itās time to heat the oven. The yeast does all the rest.
Hereās @dduaneāās first take on it and the finished product. Weāve made even more photogenic batches since.
Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you donāt want to or donāt have one, get hands-on. Itās like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat - it takes about 10 minutes - until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesnāt stick to things and feels silky-smooth.
Hereās what before and after look like.
My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.
Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and āknock it backā (more kneading, until itās getting back to the size it started, this means there wonāt be huge āis something living in here?ā holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever - weāve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roasterā¦
You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.
Let the dough rise again until itās high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180Ā°C / 355Ā°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.
Hereās some of our breadā¦
Hereās our default bread recipe - it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.
Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we donāt bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a āready for my close-upā glamour shot.
I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf. Weāre happy to have it on our table.
Even if your first attempts donāt work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like thisā¦
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