Bread

Fresh homemade bread is probably the most wonderful thing ever. I grew up waking up to the smell of fresh bread about every week, and having butter and vegemite on a fresh, still warm from the oven, slice of crusty bread is the best breakfast anyone could want.



I use my mums recipe which (from memory) is as follows:
2 cups plain flour
tsp dried yeast
1/4 cup of oat bran or cornmeal or something of the like
1/4 cup oats or grains of some sort
tbsp oil, or an egg
1/3 cup ish of warm water

Today I didn't use oat bran or anything of the like because we don't have any.

I got a massive bowl and put everything in it, I did a double batch so that I could make one loaf and also a pizza base for dinner, using both an egg and a tbsp of oil.

Then I put the dough hooks in our hand beater and mixed it a bit, and then slowly added water until it formed a dough. You want the dough to be moist, but not too wet or sticky. If you find you add too much water just add a little more flour and knead it in by hand.

Once everything has been incorperated in, clean some bench space and flour it, then put the dough on it and knead it for about 10 minutes, it should become very smooth and stretchy. If you find it too sticky, put some oil on your hands and put a bit extra flour over it and knead the flour in until its not sticky anymore.

Then get another big bowl (or just clean the first one..) and oil it, then put the dough in it and let it rise for as long as you can, until its at least doubled its size. Leave it in a warm spot, I put the oven on for a few minutes while I was kneading it and then turned it off and let it rise in the oven with the door open, but if its a warm day just on a bench or windowsill in the sun will work fine.

After an hour or so check it out, if its become massive knead it down a little again, and then put it into greased tins and let it rise for a bit again. I usually flatten the dough out a little and then roll it up and put the seam at the bottom of the tin, that way you get a pretty perfect end product. If you want you can cut a few slits in the top, or just one down the middle. You can also easily turn it into rolls, just break off handfuls of the dough and roll them up and put them on an oiled tray. (or pretty much do whatever you want, plait it, twist it, make faces out of it..)

Have the oven preheated to 220, and bake the bread it that for 10 minutes, then lower it to 180 and bake for a further 35 minutes. You can tell when its done by tipping it out of the tin and tapping the side, it should be crusty and sound kinda hollow.