Plain, straight bread, French bread has four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast.
Bread is quite forgiving. In my years of baking bread, sometimes in the strangest situations, I've had to throw out only a couple of failures. Follow these simple instructions and you should enjoy success right from the start of your bread making experience.
Here's how to bake supberb bread in the fan forced oven at home:
Ingredients:
2 cups Bakers flour
1 cup water
2 heaped tspn yeast
1 level tspn salt
You'll also need a little cooking oil for non stick purposes.
Method:
Add the flour, yeast and salt to the bowl and mix.
Add the water and mix to a messy looking dough.
Empty the bowl contents onto the floured bench top.
Flour your hands.
Kneed the dough for about ten minutes or untill it gains a smooth texture, adding flour as you go to stop it sticking excessively to your hands and the bench top. It's enough kneeding when you can poke your finger into the dough and it springs back.
Oil the mixing bowl and place the dough in it, covering the bowl with cling wrap, and place in a warm spot to rise till it expands to about twice it's original volume. This will take an hour or two, mabe more, depending on the temperature.
Once risen, empty the dough onto the floured bench top and kneed again for about five minutes. This is known as knocking it down. The bread will quickly drop back to about it's original volume.
Shape the dough into a loaf and place into the oiled bread tin, leaving it to rise for an hour or so in a warm spot.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
When the loaf has risen to about twice it's original volume, place it in the oven.
Baking will take about 30 minutes so set the timer. When you smell the aroma of fresh bread wafting around the kitchen, it likely has around five minutes to go.
A few tips:
You may wish to use a bread tin; a cake tin will do. You can also simply bake on a flat tray.
You'll need extra flour to flour the bench top and your hands. If in doubt about the exact water content, keep in mind that it's a lot easier to dry the dough down with more flour than to ad water, once the dough is mixed.
I normally mix the dough in a bowl with a wooden spatula but have done the job straight on the bench top and using my bare hands, a messy business.
You'll notice in the image above that my loaf has sunk during the first minutes of baking, likely because I let it rise too much on the second rise. This misshap didn't detract from the eating quality.
From the photo you can see that I've spread my slice of hot, fresh bread with home made yogurt cheese and mashed pumpkin and potato. I'll tell you how to make yogurt cheese in Make Yogurt Cheese.