It feels like forever since most of us traveled last, met other people, and enjoyed our freedom. From the very beginning of this pandemic, many of us jumped into totally different kinds of “time-spending” from playing online games, watching Netflix, taking online yoga classes, and learning foreign languages. We all needed to kill time… But as this pandemic went by, it became obvious that some of those new hobbies were not sustainable long term. I’d say this is a good and a bad thing at the same time. The good thing is you always have to do what you love. On the other hand, this proves that many of us were not ready to pursue big changes during the lockdown.
On top of everything else, many industries are experiencing difficulties, which drives consumer goods prices higher up. This reflects on the prices we pay for our groceries. With all those factors combined, I see more and more people are seeking to explore affordable and easy baking recipes.
Many of us are still working from home, where it’s normal to grab quick lunch somewhere between Zoom calls – a sandwich is my go-to lunch for almost a year now. While my personal choice will always remain with sourdough bread, everyone has different preferences. It’s just not always feasible to go through long and quite complicated processes for a fresh loaf a few times a week. But this doesn’t mean you can’t make fresh delicious bread at home. And to help you with that, I am sharing my very own easy bread recipe everyone can make!
PS If you’re into “heavy style” soda bread – check my Guinness bread recipe here.
Easy Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 500 grams Strong Wheat Flour
- 7 grams Dry Yeasts
- 8 grams Table Salt
- 5 grams Butter/Baking Fat
- 350 grams Water (40 °C/104 °F)
Instructions
- Dissolve yeasts in warm water and give them 5-10 min to activate.
- Weigh up flour and salt into a bowl.
- Add yeasts solution in water to the bowl and mix until the dough started to form.
- Add fat of your choice and mix it into the dough.
- Cover the bowl and rest the dough for 30 min for it to develop.
- Take the film off and fold the dough to the middle.
- Cover the bowl and leave it aside for 1 h at room temp.
- Take the film off and repeat step 6.
- Cover the bowl to prevent dough from drying. Proof dough for 1 h at room temp.
- Take out the dough from the bowl and shape it to the string.
- Let it rest for 10-15 min and reshape it again - firstly flattening the string and folding sides into the center following by rolling the dough into the tight string. Target to finish with the string length matching your tin length.
- Let the dough rest for 10 min and place it into greased tin. Dust it with flour on the top and cover with a film
- Proof loaf for ~1-1.5 h at room temp. It will double in size.
- Cut dough surface with dough-blade to your preference.
- If you have steam in the oven - it's HAVEN. Just allow generous steam at the start of the baking. Otherwise, spray the dough with water and have metal cake tin half-filled with water, placed in the oven during preheating. You will be removing it after 25 min of the bake.
- Preheat the oven to 220 C.
- Start baking w/o fan and reduce temperature to 200 °C.
- Take out the tin with water ~25-30 min after you started baking.
- Switch the fan on and bake until bread is ready. Core temperature should be around 94 °C/201 °F.
Notes
Proofing time allows the dough to ferment and create compounds that will contribute to the future bread's aroma and taste.
Once bread out of the oven - spray it with water immediately to reduce surface temperature and avoid flaking of the crust later.
