The staff of life

First off, An Engineer's Cookbook is not dead - far from it in fact. I realise that it's been quite a long time since the last post, but I've kinda been busy and not baking.

Back at the beginning of May, I bought a copy of the River Cottage Handbook No. 3: Bread by Daniel Stevens. Whether or not you like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or River Cottage really doesn't matter - if you are interested in baking bread, even if it's purely on a hypothetical level, you should buy this book. It's beautifully written and illustrated with the most wonderful photos (as are all of the River Cottage books). His enthusiasm for bread and baking really comes through in the writing and I found it a tremendously entertaining book. Yes, I read it for fun. It's a really good instructional book as well, but mostly I like it for its entertainment value.

Now I've had a chance to try baking my first loaf since reading it...

Basic White Bread
Ingredients

• 500g Strong white flour
• 300g Water
• 10g Salt
• 5g Dried yeast
• 10g Light olive oil
  

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients into a rough dough.
2. Tip out onto a large, clean work surface and knead until smooth and elastic. Test by stretching the dough into a thin membrane - According to the handbook, you should be able to stretch it out thin enough to see daylight through it with strong white flour (though I didn't quite manage this).
3. Shape into a round and return to the mixing bowl. Place the whole bowl into a black bin bag, folding the end over and tucking it under the bowl to seal.
4. Leave in a warmish place and allow to rise until the dough roughly doubles in size.
5. Uncover and tip onto the lightly-floured work surface and squash all over using your fingertips to deflate the dough.
6. (Optional) Shape into a round, return to the mixing bowl/bag and allow to rise again. Deflate the dough again.
7. Place the baking tray in the middle of the oven, a roasting tray in the bottom of the oven and pre-heat oven to its maximum temperature.
8. Divide the dough into two equal parts. Shape into rounds, flour lightly and leave on a board to rest for 10-15 minutes.
   
9. Shape the loaves as required (I shaped them as rounds again) and coat with flour.
   
10. Place on a floured board, cover with plastic bags and leave to prove until roughly doubled in size.
11. Slash the tops of the loaves with a sharp knife.
12. Transfer the loaves to the baking tray in the oven. Put a slosh of boiling water from the kettle in the roasting tray at the bottom of the oven.
13. After 10 minutes, take a look and reduce the oven temperature to ~210C/Gas Mark 6. Bake until done - roughly 40mins total.
    
14. Remove to a cooling rack and allow to cool before slicing.

In the end, I decided my dough looked too dry at the end of step 1, so I actually used 340g of water instead of 300g. I think I used too much, as my dough was too wet and just generally a right pain to work with. But the handbook is extremely instructive and insightful - particularly the recommendation to pause in the kneading every few minutes and shape the dough into a round. He's right too; it really does tame unruly dough! I also used about 7g yeast instead of 5g, so I'll have to hope you can't taste it in the final loaf...

Here's my dough after kneading (at the start of step 3):
And now in the mixing bowl. Pretty, no?
The shaped loaves, ready for the final proving (end of step 9):And a really bad shot of them after 10 minutes in the oven (step 13):And now (drum roll please) here we have it... the finished loaves!I think they look really amazing, personally. I should have made the cuts a bit deeper I think, but otherwise, they look marvellous. How do they taste? Well, I'll let you know as soon as they've cooled down...