Step by step bread

Well, it's taken me a while, but I think I've finally settled on a bread recipe I'm happy with!  Here it is step-by-step.

You need:
560g strong white bread flour
7.5g dried yeast
7.5g sugar
7.5g salt
300ml lukewarm water (and a nearby tap)
20ml of oil

7.5g sounds like a very awkward measure, right?  The trick is that with a measuring spoon, it's just a 1/2 tablespoon!  So the recipe's really easy to remember.  560g of flour, 1/2 tbsp of salt, sugar and yeast, 300ml of water, dribble of oil.

Step 1: Reactivating the yeast.
I've found the way to get the water just the right temperature is to take your full 300ml of water from the cold tap (weighed out as 300g), then microwaved for 1 minute on full power.  This gets it to just the right temperature.  You can test by putting your hands in it - it should be warm and comforting, but not hot.  If you like it, the yeast will too! I do this in a pint glass - it's quite a handy size!

Throw your yeast and sugar into the glass with the warmed water, and whisk it briskly with a fork until all the lumps have gone.  Now you can ignore it for 15 minutes, and you should end up with a nice head of froth on top of the glass, a bit like a pint of Guinness! I usually try and stir this back into the water when I'm ready to use it, in case the yeast is trying to escape on top of it.

Step 2: Mixing the ingredients
While the yeast is coming out of hibernation, measure out your flour and salt, and get your bottle of oil on standby so you don't forget to put it in - I have on numerous occasions!  You should now be at this stage...

You can also see what yeast (yellow pot) and salt (blue pot) I've been using!  Add 1/3 of the yeasty water to the flour, and start to combine the ingredients.  Now you can add your oil and get this well mixed into your dry lumpy dough.  Add another 1/3 of the water, do some more combining.  Don't be afraid to be really rough with it and get your fingers right in there and really squash everything.  I'd recommend only using one hand and I find having a dough scraper handy for lifting the dough off your fingers and back into the bowl can be really useful!

Now you need to use your eyes and fingers a bit.  I think different flours tend to absorb different amounts of water.  I've been using the Allinson strong white flour (in green bags), and I tend to find it needs an extra teaspoon of water or so.  Either way, until you find what works for you, add the last 1/3 of the water gradually so you don't end up with a puddle in your bowl.

Remember, wetter is better! Bread dough will tighten up in the first couple of minutes of kneading as it fully absorbs the water, so don't be afraid of a nice sticky lump in the bowl.  Obviously, if there's water leaking out of it when you squeeze it, then add a teaspoon of flour to soak it up, but at this stage the dough should not look smooth.  This is what I end up with before kneading:

Sticky and lumpy, but I think this is what it's meant to look like!  Make sure that you drag your lump of dough around the bowl to pick up the bits that are stuck to the side.

Step 3: Kneading
I'm not an experienced baker, so I can't give a masterclass in this... but I can describe what I do, and it seems to work for me. As I've only got 2 hands, I can't take a picture of me kneading while I'm doing it.  I might get Nomes to film me doing it for a couple of minutes at some point.

Basically... stretch, roll, turn.

1. Stretch the dough by pushing it away from your body with the heel of your right hand.  Make sure you use the fingers of your left hand to lightly hold the nearest end of the dough in place, otherwise it'll just roll away from you in a ball.  I tend to curl the fingers of my right hand over as I do the stretch so that I end up with a bit of handful of dough by the end of the motion.
2. Without taking your hand off the dough, roll the bit you've just stretched back on itself by drawing your hand back towards you.  Uncurling your fingers as you do this helps!  If you do this quickly and with confidence, your hand should lift straight off the dough as you roll it.
3. Give the dough a quick turn before repeating the stretch.

It will probably take 15 minutes of kneading by hand to get a well kneaded dough.  What I tend to find is:

• In the first 2 minutes, the dough will stiffen up as the ingredients become properly combined and the flour absorbs the last of the water.
• After about 7-8 minutes, the dough will start to ease up again as you start to build up the gluten strands.  At this point, don't give up!
• Over the next 7-8 minutes, the dough should gradually become more and more stretchy, and much smoother.  You'll find that as you do the stretching motion, the dough tears much less that it did at the start.

At this point, if you stretch your dough out in your fingers, you should be able to stretch it thin enough to see light through it when you hold it up to the window.  I didn't take a picture of this window-pane effect this time, but here's a picture from an old blog post:

Looking at this now, I'd probably put that back on the worktop and knead it for a couple of minutes more, but you can see the start of that window-pane effect under my thumb.

So, here are my top tips for kneading:

• Set yourself a 15 minute timer.  I guarantee 15 minutes is longer than you think it is.
• Put the radio on, otherwise you get bored pretty quickly.
• Don't work yourself too hard, remember you need to keep up the kneading for 15 minutes!
• The "stretch" doesn't need to be huge.  I only ever stretch it 4-6 inches (10-15cm) at a time.
• Don't flour your work surface.  This dough's a bit like blu-tack, and any that gets stuck to the bench is usually picked up by the dough again pretty quickly as you knead over it.  Adding flour dries the dough out!  If the dough really is sticking too much, add a tiny amount of oil to the work surface instead of flour.
• If you take a break for a couple of minutes, remember to knead for a couple of minutes longer to make up for it.
• If in doubt, knead for another 5 minutes.  It's nigh on impossible to overwork bread dough when kneading by hand, so if you're not sure, knead it some more.  Remember that if you wuss out early, all the work you've put in will be for nothing!

When you've finished, you should end up with something a bit like this.  Scroll back up to the "before kneading" image to see the difference!

Step 4: Rising

Simple.  Stick your nice smooth ball of dough back in the bowl you were mixing in, cover it in cling film, and leave it somewhere fairly warm for an hour (I just leave it on the worktop). It should double in size  Using the same bowl saves washing up!

Don't be tempted to leave it uncovered.  The cling film stops the dough from drying out.

Step 5: Shaping

I'd never really tried this until very recently, but it makes such a difference if you actually shape your loaf rather than just plopping a ball of dough into the tin.

So, scrape your dough out of its bowl, and squeeze all the air out so that you have a nice smooth ball of dough again.

Next, stretch the dough out so that it's three times the length of your tin.  This is where you can really tell if you haven't kneaded it enough, because the dough will tear rather than stretch!

Next, fold the ends of the dough into the middle (in thirds), so that it's three layers high.

Then use your knuckles to squash the nearest edge (getting all three layers) onto the bench.

Now, this is the bit that's kind of hard to describe. Get hold of the edge of the dough that's furthest from you with both hands.  From this edge, gradually roll the dough back on itself, using the heels of your of hands to squash the roll quite tightly as you go.  You should end up with this:

If you pick this up and turn it over, you should then see a seam along the bottom the dough.

You can then place this in the tin, making sure the seam is at the bottom.  Don't worry if you have to squeeze the edges in a bit!  The important bit is making sure the seam is underneath the loaf.

I've been using a non-stick tin with a light coating of fry-lite (spray oil).  It seems to work really well for this, and I haven't had a loaf stick at all yet.

You might be wondering what the point of all this shaping is.  I know I have been!  Here's what I think it is.  Knuckling down a seam like that limits how much the dough can expand at the bottom.  This means that in order to grow, the loaf has no choice but to bloom upwards away from the seam.  I think the stages of stretching, folding and rolling the dough have 2 effects.  I think it distributes the dough evenly so you get an even rise along the loaf, and I think it helps create this rounded blooming shape as it expands up.  I'm not really sure, but having tried it with and without this shaping step, it really does seem to make a difference!

Step 6: Proving

Same principle as the first rise - cover it, leave it somewhere warm for about an hour.  Mine tends to be on top of the oven while it's warming up.  Rather than using cling film, I've taken some advice off the Fabulous Baker Brothers (channel 4) and started using a shower cap!  It works really well, the elastic holds it on, and it gives the loaf plenty of room to expand while still keeping it covered and stopping it drying out.  I tend to spray the inside with fry-lite just in case it decides it wants to stick.

I've found the tricky bit now is knowing when it's finished this stage of proving.  Having had quite a few failed attempts, what seems to work for me in this particular tin is to wait until it's just reaching the point of filling all the available space.  You do just have to experiment with this.  If you underprove it, you'll end up with a more dense loaf.  If you overprove it, you're in danger of the loaf collapsing in on itself instead of springing up when it goes in the oven.  This is what mine looked like:

Just before you bake it, for appearances sake I like to flour, then score the loaf.  It makes it look a bit more professional!

Make sure you use as sharp a knife as possible, otherwise you'll just drag your dough around!

Step 7: Baking

Going back to while your loaf's proving, you'll want to arrange your shelves and whack a baking tray in the oven before you turn it on.  The bread will go on the top shelf:

The key to getting your loaf to spring up when it goes in the oven is heat.  I do the following.

Preheat your oven to literally as high as it will go (ours goes to 250-C).  The actual baking temperature I've used is 220-C fan, but overheating your oven means that when you open your door to put the bread in, the oven cools slightly and drops to baking temperature.  If you preheat to 220-C, then when you open the door to put the bread in, the oven actually dops below this temperature and has to heat back up again.  This loss of heat can affect how well your bread springs up in the oven.

When you put your bread in, throw half a mug of water (about 100ml) straight from the kettle onto the baking tray underneath the loaf, and shut the oven door as quickly as possible.  It should create a nice big cloud of steam.  Apparently this steam intensifies the heat in the oven, helping create a better spring and a stronger crust.

After about 8 minutes, open the door briefly to let any remaining steam out.  At this point, it should look like this:

I love the way the crust cracks slightly along the edge of tin where the loaf has sprung right up!

Close the door, and leave the loaf for about 15 minutes to finish baking.  To check if it's done, pop it out of the tin and tap the bottom of the loaf.  It should hound hollow.  If you get a sort of wet thud sound, pop it back in for 5 minutes.

When you're finished, you should end up with something that looks a bit like the picture below.  Personally, I think the crust is slightly too dark, so I might try reducing the heat slightly after the initial 8 minutes of baking.  If anyone else tries it, let me know what you think!

If you've got this far, thanks for reading all the way to the end.  :)

Happy bread baking!

Bob x