Are you caught between enjoying bread and constantly being told it will make you overweight, ill and cause you to grow horns of ill health out of your posterior?
Do you wonder about octogenarian relatives with the flexibility and cardiovascular ability of a 20 year old gymnast powered by lab made genetic booster steroids who insist bread has always been their…well …bread and butter? What’s with that?
The answer is…modern bread is made of industrial grade filth, chemicals and preservatives that has horrendous consequences for you health. Seriously…look up rapeseed oil and if you still want to eat anything containing it then you’re braver than me, and I drink homebrew.
Another reason that bread is so bad for you is that it’s full of salt. A little salt is needed to make the mixture work properly but manufacturers add far more than this in order to increase the shelf life of the product.
Now of course, if you want a no salt diet then bread, home-made or otherwise is not the way to go…but if you’re going to eat bread anyway then why eat all the extra salt?
So if you crave a sandwich or desire a dash of toast then what can the solution be?
Homemade?
No way.
That takes ages, patience, being weird and making huge amounts of sticky mess, right… right?
I mean it might be easier if you have a dishwasher….and I do!
Here it is. It’s broken, full of cleaning products and the booze I want to hide from my boyfriend. Ok? Ok.
Even if you did have a dishwasher (that worked) you’d still get sticky, stubborn dough mixture on your hands and under your nails.
Who wants hand-made bread anyway? Hand-made just means touched far too much by another person.
Let’s solve this!
Here is the lazy so and so’s answer to home made bread minus the industrial grade chemicals and unpronounceable gubbins without getting all strange about it and washing up for a week.
Here we go.
Get 500g of flour (plain or wholemeal or a mix).
Get one 7g sachet of fast action yeast.
Get 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon sugar.
Mix together in a big bowl.
Mix 330 ml of warm water with 3 table spoons of an oil of your choice or melted butter.
Mix together for 10 minutes with a spoon. Yes, a spoon. What do you want bread dough all over your hands for?
Cover your dough and leave in a warm place until it has doubled in size, this usually takes around two hours.
Tip the risen dough into a greased bread tin and bake for half an hour.
Remove from the oven, cover and leave for another hour to gently finish rising.
Done!
Note how this bread is half eaten even though I only took it out of the oven this morning. Do not trust untouched foods!
Tips:
If you use olive oil rather than butter you will get a more dense, moist bread. If you want to get it fluffier you can cook it for a little longer. Just take the bread out of the tin, flip it and continue cooking, this way the crust doesn’t get too hard!
Cooking utensils covered in dough can be a problem if you leave them overnight and the dough hardens. Soak your mixing bowl overnight with the utensils in the bowl. This will ensure an easy clean up the next day!
Shorten cooking time by making buns rather than a loaf. Separate your dough into balls and bake for 15-20 mins. You still need to leave the buns to rest for an hour after removing from the oven!