Basic bread

This is a simple bread recipe. The method has been simplified to make it as low effort as possible to make it a viable alternative to shop bought bread. We double this recipe and make 2 loaves multiple times a week, freezing one to keep it fresh until we've finished the first.

Ingredients

• 500g strong white flour
• 7g fast action dried yeast
• 7g table salt
• 30g Olive oil (yes, grams not ml! Why get out a different measuring device when you can just use the scales)
• ~300ml water

Method

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the flour, yeast, salt, and olive oil. Try making little wells in the flour to keep everything separate before mixing.
2. Turn the mixer on to low, 1/10 on our KitchenAid, and slowly stream the water into the bowl.
3. Once all the water is in, increase the speed to 2/10 and leave it kneading for up to 10 minutes. You should be able to carefully stretch out a piece of the dough and see light through it before it rips.
4. Cover the bowl with cling film. Lay a tea towel over the top and leave it in a warm spot for roughly 1 to 2 hours or until the dough has roughly doubled in size. This varies based on the ambient temperature. Quick in the summer, slow in the winter!
5. Oil your hands then scrape the dough out of the bowl into a loaf tin. Shape the dough into a log with your hands as best as you can so that it fits the tin a little better. Brush oil onto one side of the cling film you used before and lay it loosely over the tin. Leave it for around 30-50 minutes, again depending on the temperature, until it's expanded to the tin nicely. When it's looking roughly half way done, preheat the oven to 190°C.
6. Score the top of the dough with a sharp knife. I normally do 3 evenly spaced diagonal cuts about 1cm deep.
7. Bake at 190°C for 10 minutes, then drop the temperature down to 160°C and bake for another 30 minutes.
8. Remove the loaf from the oven, turn it out onto a cooling rack and leave for 1 hour before cutting into it.