Bianca's Bread

 

300g white bread flour

200g rye or wholewheat flour

1tsp instant yeast

8g salt 

+- 350ml luke warm water 

Mix dry ingredients and add water and mix to combine in a large bowl. Cover bowl with clingfilm

Let rise for 12 to 20 hours, knocking down at least 2 hours before you wish to bake and recover with the clingfilm.

Preheat cast iron pot in oven at 230 C for 30min

Bake in pot with lid on for 45 minutes at 230 C

Remove lid and bake for 5 minutes at 230 C

Let stand in pot for 10 minutes

Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes before slicing. 

Lekue Silicone Breadmaker

 

 

 A week or so ago an advert popped up on my Facebook page for the Lekue Silicone Breadmaker. I had a look on YouTube and decided that this tool would make my bread baking a lot easier as I like to use the no knead overnight proving method which results in a very wet dough and extremely hard to handle. This tool does everything in the one bowl and final result comes out untouched by human hands

Anyway I bought the Lekue and have made my first loaf with it and pretty pleased with the results. I found that the recipe had a touch too much liquid in it and I have therefore cut down on the original recipes water. I do find that generally our flours that we get here in South Africa have a high moisture content. I have added a few little touches of my own as well.

Ingredients.

200g white flour (Gideon Milling)

200g wholewheat flour (Eureka)

1 cup mixed seeds (sunflower, linseed and pumpkin Seeds)

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp dried yeast

330ml water slightly warmed if the weather is cold

Method.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in the bread maker. I find that a solid silicone spatula works great.

Add the olive oil and water and mix with the spatula until well combined.

Close up the breadmaker and cover with plastic wrap.

Leave to stand overnight or 6 to 8 hours minimum to prove and double in size.

Open the breadmaker up and knock the dough down with the spatula.

Close up again and recover with the plastic wrap to rise again for 2 hours.

Put that breadmaker into a 200c preheated oven for 40 minutes to bake.

Take it out the oven using oven gloves, open it up and put the loaf back into the oven for 10 minutes to brown.

Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes on a wire rack

Good Every Day White Loaf

I decided to try something new to be able to have a loaf of standard freshly baked bread for breakfast in the morning.

I did a bit of research on the web and came up with this recipe, tweaked a bit to suit what I wanted to achieve.

What I wanted was a loaf of proved unbaked bread in the morning that I could just pop straight into the oven. It involved making the dough in the previous afternoon, letting it rise, placing it in a buttered bread tin and letting it rise again overnight. 

I tried it out and it worked well so I am saving this recipe for future reference.

 Here is the recipe.

500g Gideon stone ground white bread four

1t salt

1t dried instant yeast

315ml/g room temp water

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon.

Add the water and stir to combine. When it starts sticking to the spoon you may have to get stuck in with your hands, using a spatula to get the dough off the spoon.

Once combined, turn out onto the counter top, which you will have to flour to stop the dough from sticking. Knead for 10 minutes, adding more flour to the counter if necessary.

Place back into an oiled mixing bowl and cover with cling film to allow to rise. Anything from 30 minutes in warm weather to a couple of hours in cold weather.

When risen, turn out onto the counter and push down with your hands and shape into a loaf. Place the loaf into a well buttered bread tin and place this into a bread tupperware or similar container that you can seal. Place the lid on to the container. The one I used can be seen in the background of this photo.

The purpose of this is to let it rise without drying out. I have found that putting a bit of cling film or a tea towel on top of the raw dough, as often suggested in bread recipes, ends up with it sticking to the dough.

Let it stand overnight and hopefully when you wake up in the morning, you will find your beautifully risen loaf waiting for you to bake.

Bake in a 200 degree C oven for 40 minutes and turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

If you prefer a crisper crust on top, spritz the loaf with water before baking and then also open the oven a couple of times during the bake and spritz of couple of squirts of water into the oven. The resulting steam is what makes the crust crisp.