Homemade Bread

I made some homemade bread this weekend. Bread making is just something that takes practice to get it right. Given the time it takes to make bread, it is only something that I do on the weekends. The recipe I use is a basic bread recipe from a Jamie Oliver cookbook. There are not too many specifics with this recipe, which is okay, but that means that I have to fine tune it. Here is the basic bread recipe with some changes:

• 3/4 oz active dry yeast (three 1/4 oz packets)
• 2 Tablespoons honey or sugar
• Just over 2 cups tepid water
• 6 to 8 5 Cups bread flour
• Two One Tablespoons salt
• Bench flour

I’d pass on the sugar, and use honey because it is not processed as much. I’ve found that two cups of water is not enough to support 6 to 8 cups of flour. So I end up throwing out perfectly good flour because there was just not enough liquid. Two tablespoons of salt is just too much, go with one instead.

Here are the steps to making the bread:

• Dissolve the yeast and honey in half of the tepid water
• Mix the flour and salt in a bowl (or on a counter if you like). Make a well in the center of the flour and salt, and add the yeast slurry. Slowly incorporate the flour into the liquid. When the water is absorbed, add the remaining water.
• Turn the dough out on the counter or cutting board, and begin to knead for five minutes.
• After kneading, fashion the dough into a ball, score, and let double in size in a warm, moist, and draft-free place.
• Once doubled, punch it down, and fashion the dough into any shape desired. Feel free to use a loaf pan.
• Put the bread into a preheated oven, and following the baking times and temperatures for the bread recipes on the following pages.

In adapting the above directions, here is how I made the bread. In the past, I tried using the counter to do the mixing. This, however, is not as easy as it sounds, and I also find that it makes a bigger mess than using a large mixing bowl. I’ve already mentioned the salt, but two tablespoons is just too much. Since six to eight cups is just too much, I decided to use four cups for this bread. When it was all said and done, the dough looked something like this:

The dough was just too wet, so I would slow incorporate flour a bit at a time. I definitely used more than an additional cup, so in the future I would start out with five cups and work from there.

After the kneading, the dough should something like this:

Now it is time to let the dough rise. The dough is still fairly sticky, so a forty-minute rise will often leave it stuck to whatever you let the dough rise. A slightly oiled bowl works well for the rise. I use a sheet pan lined with a silpat. Nothing sticks to this thing, and I will use the same setup for the actual baking.

It is still a bit cold here in Boston, so having the dough rise on the counter is just not an option. For the first rise I like to use the cold oven. To make it warm and moist, I use the electric kettle to boil some water, pour the water into a container, and set it in the oven with the light on. For the second rise, I use another room in the house so I can shut out the cats. I still use the boiling water next to the rising bread.

I find that this recipe is best put to use by splitting the dough into two equal balls after the first rise. I then shape the dough into smallish loaves, score the top, and let them double in size for the final time.

You’ll notice that Jamie Oliver does not give baking times nor temperatures for basic bread, so this is a bit of a guessing game. This last time, I cooked the bread at about 375 for about an hour. I think that I should have reduced the temperature a bit, and increased the cooking time. I also keep the container of water in the oven to keep it moist. I heard that it helps create a crunch crust, though I have yet to see this for myself. I think the next time I will skip the water during the cooking phase. Here is the final product: