Easy Bread - slightly plagiarised from Jamie Oliver
A little change from the usual (hah!) posts. Bread is awesome, and it's even more awesome when it's fresh. I've been making my own recently, and you know I love to share.
This isn't completely stolen from Jamie Oliver - I knicked the basic recipe, simplified it somewhat and took out numerous references to things being 'pukka'.
Ingredients for a medium sized loaf, or two pizza bases
--------------------------------------------------------
10.5g of dried yeast
15g of sugar
250g of plain flour
250g of strong white bread flower
290ml / ~half pint of warm water
1 teaspoon of salt
Optionally: pizza toppings (see point 10 onwards)
0. Mix the yeast, water and sugar together in a jug, big glass, small bowl or
whatever you have to hand.
1. Put everything else (all the flour and the salt) into a big bowl and mix it
up a bit. Bonus points if you sieve the flour on the way in.
2. Pour the liquid from step 0 into the flour and mix it up until it starts to
look a bit like dough.
3. Spread flour all over your work-surface, tip the dough onto it and knead
it for about 5 minutes. Put some effort into it, dammit!
4. Put the dough in a tin dusted with flour, cover it (with clingfilm a tea-towel),
and put it somewhere warm for 45 minutes.
5. Your dough should have doubled in size. Put it back on your flour-covered
work-surface and beat the crap out of it for two minutes; really - releave
some stress.
6. Put your dough in your chosen container. For pizza, roll it out nice and
thin and put it on a baking tray.
7. Cover and put it back in your warm place to rise again. 10 minutes for
pizza, 45 minutes for a loaf.
8. Cook on a middle shelf at about 200 degrees celcius. ~5 minutes for pizza,
15-20 minutes for a loaf. Just keep an eye on it and use your judgement.
9. If you're making a loaf, you're done! For pizza, leave it to cool a bit
and get ready to make some toppings.
10. Mix up some salt, pepper, oragano, tomato puree, barbeque sauce, tomato
sauce and olive oil. Taste it. Make sure it tastes good.
11. Spread your tasty sauce from step 10 all over the base and then throw some
mozzarella on top of it.
12. Cut up some peppers, sausage, bacon, whatever - try not to go mental with
it. Throw all that on top of the mozzarella.
13. Throw it back in the oven for about 10 minutes. Same heat.
14. I refuse to put 'enjoy' as the last step. EAT IT, YOU IDIOT!
Once you've got the basic recipe and technique down, innovate with it and make awesome stuff. Put some olive oil, garlic and herbs on your bread just before step 7, mash it with your fingers and make some focaccia.
First posted: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:14:32 +0000