White Bread Recipe

Beautiful Homemade White Bread

Baking Homemade Bread

For the past few years now I have been making bread – including this white bread recipe – completely by hand. Prior to that I had always liked a good white farmhouse or granary loaf from a bakery, rather than a packaged, sliced loaf from a supermarket. However I used to think making your own bread was too time consuming for a busy working woman. I think I also considered that breadmaking was a specialised art that had to be mastered over time, and not something that could be easily learnt by reading a book and having a go.

Then a couple of friends got bread-making machines and were very excited about having fresh bread in the mornings, even if only at weekends. I listened to their glee and pondered.

Baking my own bread has been a revelation for me. Its therapy, exercide, medittaion all in one with a tasty product at the end of it!

Commercially Produced Bread

I was also influenced by reading articles about excessive sugar in manufactured bread, along with ‘flour improvers’ and other ingredients which did not quite belong in bread. The excessive energy used in processing and distributing supermarket bread also became a concern. Many companies that mass produce bread are more interested in profit than the the flavour and quality of their loaf.

It Began With A Bread Machine

So I got a bread machine – from Freecycle – and began experimenting and turning out some pretty tasty bread. This was about seven years ago. I began to regularly set the machine to come on overnight to produce bread for the morning.

After a while though, I wondered what it would be like to make bread completely by hand. I found a great book and – well – just had a go.

Baking Bread – Not Time Consuming – Just Good Planning

Well wow! I was completely converted and am now a ‘making bread by hand’ evangalist!
Firstly it takes very little of your own time – 10 minutes doing the initial kneading and then a further 5 minutes ‘knocking back’ for the final ‘proving’. Don’t worry – terms will be explained!

The time is taken up by the bread doing its own thing – rising – while you are busy getting on with something else. Thus it can be made in an evening – it can even be left in the fridge overnight to rise slowly. It is possible to fit breadmaking in with a busy lifestyle.

And I love the process of kneading. It feels good – it gets your fingers and shoulders working – and you can feel the bread change from a slightly stick, craggy consistency, to a smooth elastic dough – as if by magic!

Then when the finished loaf comes out of the oven – I am just so proud – even after years of making my own bread!

It is fun experimenting with different flours and I love buying flour that has been grown and milled locally. Whenever I go on holiday, I bring a bag of local bread flour back!

Tips

• Make sure your flour is ‘strong flour’
• Use a measuring spoon as it is important to get the right quantities of sugar, salt, yeast and oil
• The warm water should be ‘hand hot’
• Make sure the oven is up to temperature before you put the loaf in the oven