Yet more bread!

Ever since I weaned myself off white bread in my forties because I believed wholemeal to be more nutritious, I have found white bread a little insipid and prefer the more robust flavour of the wholemeal. However I am now having to have less fibre in my diet so white bread is best.

I noticed that my Food Processor book has several more recipes for a variety of different breads including a plain “Country loaf”,  using just, flour, salt, yeast and water.

So thinking that I could definitely do with some more white bread I decided to give it a go!

The recipe only uses 250g (80z+) which is about half what I would normally use when making bread by hand. (If I had the larger sizes of food processor I could use twice as much apparently). But since this bread is just for me and so easy to make it does mean fresh bread more often! though a greater expenditure in terms of electricity.

Now when I first use a recipe, unless it seems obviously wrong, I like to follow it exactly. The only thing here that I can’t copy is that it uses fresh yeast and that seems almost impossible to buy these days, so I am using instant yeast, I substituted 6g of instant yeast for the 12g of fresh yeast specified.

I was pleased to find that this time the food processor mixed the ingredients into a neat ball near the top with hardly any residue on the rest of the bowl!

[I would have taken a photograph but I was making myself my pesto version of spaggetti bolognese at the time. Not that taking photographs of bread as you make it is very good for the camera as it tends to get floury!]

I put the dough in the airing cupboard for the two hours specified and found that even before the time was up it had risen very well. Interestingly the recipe actually specified flattening the dough and folding it just like the recent wholemeal loaf I made.

So I spread it out and then folded it. The loaf in the book was much rounder so I realised I should have done it a little differently.

[I may not be suffering from chemo brain exactly but tiredness and several nights lack of sleep does mean that my little grey cells are not as nimble as normal.]

I can now see that I should have made the pre-folded piece longer. Though what I did did look similar to the photograph in the book!

I then returned it to the airing cupboard for one hour as instructed. This time I was not sure if the bread had risen enough but decided to cook it anyway as the oven was now on. The photograph of the finished loaf had multiple slashes and not the one cross that the instructions suggested. So I decided to follow the picture. Note that I had difficulty with the slashing (none of my knives are especially sharp!) and I obviously should have done them deeper as you can see from the finished loaf. 

When I peered into the oven after twenty minutes the bread looked very pale but I now wonder if giving it the full time specified was too much.

I actually followed the instructions to put a tray of water in the bottom of the oven before heating but I did find it was a bit dangerous as every time I opened the oven I was met with a cloud of scalding hot steam! Not sure I will do that again.

The texture of the bread is quite dense. But more even than that in the photograph in the book.There is also a recipe in the book for a plaited brioche with butter and milk but no egg. I might try that next. Though I am making Hot Cross Buns today!