Perfect Bread
Monday, 07 July 2003 23:51:23
Well, I reckon I've made the best bread I've ever done tonight - and it was pretty simple.
- In a glass put about 300ml (a little bit less than a tin or beer or coke) of warm water. stir in two teaspoons of sugar and two teaspoons of Allinson's yeast. Stir together and put to one side to re-activate.
- In a bowl put three tablespoons of olive oil, one egg and one teaspoon of salt. Mix together.Add about three cups of flour and mix thoroughly. Mix until the mixture is not wet, but there aren't any clumps.
- If there is a centimetre or so of foam at the top of the yeast/sugar/water mixture, it's about ready, so pour it into the flour.
- Mix this up thoroughly until it's a smooth paste. Add more flour until you have a dough which comes away from the sides and isn't too sticky.
- Start kneading with your hands, sprinkling on a little flour if it gets too sticky. Knead it for about 5 to 10 minutes, until it's got a smooth texture which is quite elastic. Kneading develops the gluten in the dough and helps strengthen the final loaf. Un-kneaded bread is soft and wimpy, and it won't rise well.
- Put the dough in a warm place to rise for a while. I put mine in the bowl on top of the stereo, which is quite warm. Let rise until it's about doubled in size. This normally takes about 45 minutes for me.
- Push the air out of it and knead it again, sprinkling a small amount of flour if required. Shape it and put it in the container you're going to cook it in. I normally make a cylinder about a foot long and as thick as it needs to be. (My oven is quite small, so one foot long is as big as I can get.) Make sure you give it a good kneading before shaping. This is very important. I put the bread in a baking tray with some flour underneath, although you can use oil too. Put this somewhere warm and start heating up the oven. Put the heat of the oven to as hot as it will go, and spray some water in there.
- When the oven is hot, your loaf should have expanded a bit more. Spray more water into the over (from a plant mister) and put the loaf in. Optionally, you can slash the top of the loaf with a razor blade or a very sharp knife to allow a controlled tear on the top of the loaf. Try not to disturb the loaf too much when doing this. Set the temp to 180°C and the timer to 30 minutes. The high heat will add some crispness to the outside of the loaf and the falling temperature will ensure that the inside doesn't cook for too long at too high a temperature. For the first three or four minutes, spray the oven walls with the plant mister so that the air in the oven is humid. This helps the crust too. (A French bread oven is very hot and very humid.)
- In the over, the bread will first sag slightly, then rise up for a while. Soon, it will stop rising and start browning at the top. After about 20-25 minutes (for this size loaf), tap the top with a chopstick or something like that. It should sound hollow. It if does, take the tray out of the over and try tapping the bottom, which should also sound hollow. If it does, it's done! Put it on a big plate (or whatever) and, after leaving it cool for a few minutes, cut one end off. If it's nice and firm when you cut the end, it's a beaut! Have a good smell of the hot bread - it should smell very slightly yeasty. When you taste it, it should be smoothly textured. Now, slather butter or cheese on it and eat it. It should be absolutely wonderful.