Basic Yeast Bread
Ingredients (small loaf)
- 420g bread flour, white/wholemeal/a mixture
- 15g salt
- 5g yeast (instant or fresh)
- 1 tbsp / 15-20g olive oil
- 300ml+ water
Ingredients (medium loaf)
- 560g bread flour, white/wholemeal/a mixture
- 20g salt
- 7g yeast (instant or fresh)
- 1½ tbsps / 20-25g olive oil
- 400ml+ water
Method
- Combine dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and mix well with a fork or spatula. Add most of the water, the olive oil and mix well, scraping the dry flour from the sides to achieve a homogeneous texture and moisture content. Add more water if necessary. It doesn't want to be too firm.
- Leave to rise until the yeast has got going and it's clearly significantly bigger.
- Knead until it feels good.
- Leave to rise again until doubled in size.
- Knead again but not too much. Divide into rolls if that's your bag. Leave the dough to rise again until at least 50% bigger but still with some oven spring.
- Put a lightly oiled cast iron pan with lid in the oven and heat the oven to max.
- When the dough is ready (see above), put it carefully in the pan and bake it for around 15 minutes at max, then turn down to around Mark 7 (200°C to 210°C) for around another 15 minutes.
- Take it out, and if it's starting to brown on top, smells really good and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom, the bread is probably ready, so leave it to cool on a wire rack before serving with slooshes of butter.
- It's a good idea to make a few loaves and experiment with the ingredients, the method, the baking time and temperature, and see what works best for you. You can add things like seeds, grains, chopped garlic, cheese, spices... You might then need to add a little more water too. The loaf in the picture has added linseeds and black rice.