A basic loaf

This is the first bread recipe in Elizabeth David's, English Bread and Yeast Cookery, its on p.256, you reach it after reading through the first third of the book which talks about milling processes, different bread flours, working with yeast, the importance of salt, the use of eggs, fruit and fats in bread, bread ovens, storage, moulds and tins, weights and measures and much more.

All of this information is helpful if your a theory sort of person, I'm not so much, but because Elizabeth writes so well I was drawn in, fascinated by all her research and her diatribes. I particularly enjoyed her damnation of contemporary supermarket, plastic wrapped bread, as relevant today as in the 1970's.

I've made this loaf twice now, the first time I only used 100% stone ground, organic, wholemeal (or wheatmeal as the recipe calls it) bread flour as it was the only bread flour I had in the house. I was very pleased with it, especially as it was my first try at using fresh yeast in many a year. You can see it here on the right, it came out with firm crust and a good bread crumb. It was lovely to eat, very nutty, but a tad heavy and dense, great for toast but a bit too heavy for sandwiches.

Today I gave it another go, this time with the correct proportions of the two different flours, exactly as stated in the recipe, and it is equally delicious and much lighter, it also produced a much bigger loaf and I had to use my larger loaf tin. As with the loaf above, its great to eat on its own with good organic butter, but also works as sandwich bread and as toast. It has a nutty, wheaty flavour which we like very much.

The bread is very easy to make, nothing complicated in the recipe, it only has five ingredients, the two flours, salt, compressed yeast and warm water. The most important thing is to have all your ingredients warm to assist the yeast growing and although the recipe doesn't specify it, I use organic flour (from the Blue Mountain Co-Op, their flour is excellent and they have a great variety to choose from as well). Its also important to use bread flour as it is stronger than cake flour, i.e. it has more gluten.

The basic loaf

Bread tin: a kilo loaf tin, 8cm deep, capacity1.5-2 litres

550g plain unbleached bread flour

450g wheatmeal bread flour

15g bakers compressed yeast or 10g dried yeast (I used compressed)

20g rock or sea salt (if using rock salt, disolve it in warm water first)

340g water at blood heat

Oil or fat to grease bread tin

Put flours and salt into a heat proof bowl and put into a slow oven to warm, for about 10 minutes, don't burn it though. While warming the flour, put compressed yeast into a cup with a small amount of blood warm water, this brings it to life after being dormant in the fridge.

Take flours and salt mix out of oven, mix yeast up to a creamy consistency, then pour the creamed yeast into the centre of the flour. Add some tepid water and stir it around with the yeast, use a wooden spoon. Pour in rest of tepid water and mix it all together with your hands. I love this bit, messy and creative, what's not to like! If its too sticky add in a bit more flour, work the dough until it feels elastic and lithe and comes easily away from the bowl sides. This takes about 3-4 minutes. Cover the bowl with some plastic wrap and set aside in a draft free place to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (I like 2, Elizabeth says the longer the rise, the better the bread). During this time the dough will more than double in size.

OK, dough has risen, next you get to bang the dough about, great tension release! First punch the dough down with your fist, then gather it up and bang it into your bowl a few times. This is called punching down or knocking back. It redistributes the yeast gas bubbles through your dough and helps the gluten to develop, all good things. Now take it out and knead it for 3 - 4 minutes, put some flour down first so your dough doesn't stick to your board or bench. You can use a mixer with a dough hook, but manual is much more pleasurable.

Warm your bread tin while kneading the dough, grease it with a little oil or butter. Shape your dough into a loaf shape, with the folds underneath. Put into warmed bread tin, cover with plastic wrap again and let rise for 45 minutes.

As you can see it will rise out of the tin! About 30 minutes into the rising, turn your oven on to 220-230oC, when the 45 minutes is up, take off the plastic wrap and pop into your hot oven. Bake 15 minutes, then drop temperature to 205oC and bake a further 15 minutes, then remove bread from tin, return to oven on its side and bake at 180oC for a further 20 minutes.

Your bread is ready when your knock it on its base with your knuckles and it gives out a resonant sound. It should be golden brown all over, like the photo on the right. Cool the bread across the bread tin or on a cake rack.

Elizabeth says that 'this type of bread is not good until its quite cold and in fact does not develop its full flavour until the next day' (p.260) and all bread recipes say to let your bread cool completely before cutting..... bet you can't though, I never can! It tastes delicious hot, delicious cold, delicious the day after and for days after. It keeps well in our bread box, it freezes well (but not till completely cold). If you wrap it while still warm, the crust will soften though.

Elizabeth goes on to discuss the recipe and adaptions, use of yeast, slow risings and other interesting things, but I shall chat about these issues in another post, after I have tried them.