How are you all? Welcome to Steve's kitchen we're
continuing the introduction to bread
baking with a favorite of mine and one I
think everybody enjoys, just a simple
bread roll. Almost all bread is just a
combination of flour, water, a little
seasoning and a tiny bit of work. I do
highly recommend that you weigh out your
flours, no self-respecting Baker would
ever do it by volume but I know a lot of
people in the US prefer to do things with
cups I'm using 450 grams that's around
about a pound of strong bread flour for
this recipe, I will give you it in cups
but I will get comments down below
saying my dough is too wet or dry if you
use only cups. So if you've just started out
with bread making buy yourself a simple and
inexpensive set of scales it'll make
things a lot easier. So we've got 450
grams of bread flour pop that into a
mixing bowl. Now I'm using active dried yeast
I'm going to use two teaspoons and just
regular salt 1 teaspoon in there and
it's always a good idea to keep your
salt and yeast on the opposite sides of the
mix because salt can have an adverse
effect on your yeast. Now we've got 280
mls that's about ten fluid ounces just
a tiny bit under, of slightly warm water
going to pop that in there. Now a lot of people
will get their hands in there at this
point but it can get very sticky and
messy I advise you to start off with a
fork and we're using that just to
incorporate the liquid into the flour
but after a few seconds you're going to
want to get your hand in there. I'm just
going to draw this dough together and
you want all the loose flour to come
away from the side of the bowl.
Let's turn that dough out onto our
countertop, now again throughout this
series I'm going to be using my hands to
knead the dough, you can use a machine but I
think if you're just learning how to
make dough you should try and get your hands in
there and get a feel and understand but
you are welcome to use a dough mixer if
you wish
Now the idea is to stretch the dough
out, stretch the glutens, fold it back
turn it round and stretch it and you'll
develop a sort of style
Now you'll notice when you start working
the dough it's got a lot of texture to it
so we're going to knead this now for 10
minutes
Sure if you want to use a food mixer or
even a bread maker for that matter, to do
the work for you, you can but because this is
an introduction to bread making I really
want you to get used to handling the
dough and getting a feel for the texture
and the moisture content in your dough
Now after 10 minutes you'll start to
feel a different texture in the dough
and rather than that slightly gritty
texture you're going to have a nice
silky dough like this, with a great spring
back. So now we're going to leave this dough
until it at least has doubled in size
and that will vary a lot depending on
the temperature that you're in. Try and
find somewhere that's really warm and
we're going to pop this back in the bowl,
just a little bit of oil to coat over
the bread and seal it to keep the
moisture in. Now a little tip because
it's winter where we are, quite often
your oven will have a light on it
and just having the light on in the oven
can quite often make it a good
temperature, an ambient temperature to let
your dough rise. Take a look at this
dough in barely an hour it's probably
almost quadrupled in size. Its full of
beautiful air, I am just going to knock it down
now, so it's knocked all the air out of it
see how beautiful and elastic that is. Now
what we're going to do is divide this up
just going to half and half again. Now
for me this makes about 10 rolls. The
way I would shape the roll is like this
you take your piece of dough in a cupped hand
and pop it onto a flat surface and we
have to roll it around like that with a
slightly loose hand until we get a
beautiful dough ball, like this as you get
better at doing these you should be able
to do two at a time so you can just roll
them around loosely in your hand, cup
them up and you'll end up with two
beautiful little rolls like that and I'm
going to pop these on a baking tray on a
little bit of parchment sometimes it can
be quite fun to put the rolls quite
close together so as they rise they
join together, if that's the style
you're looking for go for it. If you find
that a little complicated you can always
hold them in your hands and sort of roll
it like you might a snowball, again it's
having that combination between firm and
not too firm to form a nice ball but I
do think it works better on the
countertop. So I'll just get on quickly
and finish these off now. I'm going to pop
these in the oven and just put the light
on, I'm going to cover them first in a
plastic bag
just to trap some of the moisture in
there and they really don't take long to
prove the second time round, about 20
minutes or so and they should pop up
almost double in size. Now just 25 minutes
and they've risen beautifully and
sometimes in warmer weather they almost
proved fully in size before you even get
them in the oven
There are a few things you can do before
your rolls go in the oven, some people
like to brush a little bit of milk over
them, little bit of an egg wash, even a
little bit of sugar and water.
I often like to dust mine with a little bit
of flour, you can make a little cut in
the top so that they bloom open. We're going to keep
it fairly simple for this one we're just
going for plain bread rolls. I will
actually dust a little flour on one side
just to show you an example of how they
can look, one thing for sure once you've
proved your rolls
don't be too rough with them you don't
want to knock them back down and get the
air out of them. Now we're going to bake
these for about 15 minutes in an oven, I've
preheated 200 degrees Celsius that's 400
Fahrenheit we're just looking for a
golden brown. Now you can if you want
experiment and put a little tray of hot
water in the bottom of the oven, steam in
an oven can create a really nice crust
but for this one I'm going to keep it fairly
simple.
The whole house smells delicious and
that's the beauty of baking homemade
bread, just going to pop these down here it's
so very satisfying
I'm going to let these cool down and
then I'll just show you inside what the
crumb is like and I'll have a little try
as well. Now I'm going to take one of
these rolls here that's still quite
warm you can see we've got a nice crust
on top
hollow sounding on the bottom. Now this
is still too hot but I can't resist it
Let's just pop that open, have a look
inside it has a beautiful crumb this it's
super hot but you know what I'm going to
do I'm going to pop a little bit of
butter in there because I absolutely have to
try this
fresh home-baked bread
this is going to get you hooked, taking such
simple ingredients and making such
delicious food and if you're joining me
along on the ride for this little series
that I'm doing about an introduction to
bread making I'd love to see photographs
and how are you getting along. Now I'm
always getting asked about bread flours
I'm going to leave a link at the end that
explains why we use bread flour for
making this style of bread.
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episode