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Today, we're gonna show you how to make basic bread.
It uses some really simple, cheap, boring ingredients: flour, yeast, water -
but in the oven, it transforms into something that everyone loves: freshly baked bread.
So the key ingredient is our flour.
This is strong, white flour - by strong, we mean it's got strong content of protein or gluten
in the flour and that's what will give the bread its elasticity, bounce, its crumb.
So that all goes into a bowl
and then we're gonna add in some salt,
some sugar,
and our yeast.
And this is the dried stuff, so you get it in a sachet, you want about 7 grams,
one sachet worth, for the five hundred grams of flour.
That can go in as well, make sure it's separate to the sugar and the salt,
if the yeast directly touches salt, it doesn't really like it.
Give it a mix up.
Now the yeast is in there as a leavening agent so it's going to
give the bread its rise but also so much of its flavour.
So to activate the yeast, it needs four things:
one of those is food, it gets food in the form of the natural sugars
in flour plus the little bit of sugar we added to speed things up.
It also needs moisture or water so we're gonna add water to the mix,
turn it into a dough.
Thirdly, it needs warmth,
which is why our water is just slightly warm, it should be
body temperature, about thirty-seven degrees, but basically anything
out of a warm tap that isn't too hot.
And finally it needs time, we're gonna come onto the time in a minute,
but what you need to do is pour our water into the dough,
leave a little bit back of your measured amount, in case you don't need it all.
You can always add more if you need it, you can't take it away.
And then mix it together. I'm just using table knife,
really simple while it's wet to make sure it doesn't stick to too much
and a table knife is a lot easier
than a fork or a spoon, it's much easier to clean.
This whole process can be done in a mixer with a dough hook,
it's just as simple to do it by hand, it just takes a bit more effort.
This will need a little bit more of our water,
then we get our hands in.
As soon as you start to get one dough, then it's best to get your fingers in,
you want to bring it together and as soon as it's all in one lump,
get it out onto a board - it makes the next process a lot easier.
If at any point, you find your bread is a little bit sticky,
then add a tiny touch more flour,
but we don't want to dry this out, you do want it
tacky but not sticky.
What this is doing is stretching the gluten in the flour and it will give you a really
elastic dough - at this point,
you can see it's kinda gonna break, it's mottled, it's not looking great.
We have to keep working it like this for about ten minutes, until it's soft and elastic.
That's what gives you a good loaf.
Movement is using the heel of your hand,
just moving it around on the board. You're not beating it,
it's more just kind of giving it a rough massage.
It's worth mentioning that into your flour, yeast, salt and sugar, you can add other flavours:
like dried herbs,
or garlic powder or spices but today we're just going for the classic.
If you're doing this by machine, five minutes is probably enough but by hand,
a good ten, until you get that soft elasticity.
Even after a few minutes, you can see it's getting better
but it's not there yet.
Bread dough and pasta dough are completely opposite to pastry dough.
These ones you want to work hard, to stretch the gluten, to give you a great loaf.
After plenty of kneading, you should have a soft pillow of dough
and now we need to leave it to rest. The technical term is to prove
and in that time, the yeast is going to
ferment, so you want to tuck the bottoms under to give a nice smooth top
and we're gonna leave it in a bowl,
covered with a tea towel in a warm room.
The temperature's important, we need to give the yeast time and warmth;
in that time it'll feed off the sugars and it'll give off carbon dioxide,
and that's what gives it the bubbles and makes it rise. After an hour,
it looks something like that. That's our proven dough,
and at this point, we knock it back which basically means take out the excess bubbles.
You can see the texture of the dough now and as you do that, you can smell it.
The yeast is giving so much flavour to this bread.
Give it one final knead,
and at this point if you want to, you can put in some extra flavour,
some fresh herbs, some cheese, some dried tomatoes or olives -
now's the time to add it, after that first prove.
And after that first prove, you can see the consistency of the bread, it's even softer than it was before
and now time to bake it.
And you can bake it anyhow you like, we're gonna do it in a loaf tin. So grab yourself a loaf tin,
again just like before you're gonna tuck it under so you got a nice round top,
but this time in a ball with a slightly elongated shape,
and put it into our tin.
Push it out to flatten it slightly, and then
we're gonna leave it for a second prove, so another thirty to forty five minutes under a tea towel again, just at room temperature
and it will bloom up.
At that point you are ready to bake.
To bake our risen dough, pre-heat an oven to two hundred and twenty degrees Celsius,
and place an oven proof tray on the bottom of the oven.
As the bread goes in, pour water into that tray and that will give you steam,
which gives you an amazing crust.
You want to bake it for fifteen minutes
at the two hundred and twenty, and then turn the temperature right down
to a hundred and eighty degrees Celsius for another twenty minutes of baking.
You know when your loaf is cooked cause not only has it risen a little bit more
than before it went in the oven but it's now golden on top and if you turn it out,
and give it a tap,
it should sound hollow. At this point, you need to let your loaf completely cool before slicing it.
In summary, a few things to remember to get your bread right everytime:
first of all, is the warmth
that the yeast needs to do its proving,
so that's why you use warm water and prove at room temperature.
The second one is time, give it plenty of time
to double in size - first in the bowl, and then secondly in the loaf tin.
Thirdly, when you bake it, a really high temperature to start off with
and a tray of water at the bottom of the oven to create steam, then turn it down halfway through baking.
And finally, you know it's baked when you got that hollow sound.
Remember all those, and you got everything you need to make basic bread.