Basic Bread and variations

A perfect loaf made by Tom. White with a little multigrain flour substituted

Living overseas means you can't always get a good old British style loaf. In many places the bread tastes very sweet (in fact, I think it is actually getting sweeter here too, but that's another story). We made a lot of our own bread using variations on this recipe. It fills the house with a delicious aroma and there is always a race to get the 'knobby' (end of the loaf) and scoff it whilst still hot with lashings of butter.

Basic white loaf:

600g strong white flour (value brand plain white flour also seems to work fine)
2tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2.5 tsp instant dried yeast (or one sachet)
400ml warm water

1. Put the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. Add the water and combine, then knead until stretchy and smooth. This is easiest in a food processor with a dough hook, but not difficult to do by hand and good for working out the frustrations of the day.
3. Shape the dough roughly to fit a large loaf tin. Place in the greased loaf tin, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place until more or less doubled in size. Beware of putting on a warm windowsill where the cat likes to sit, unless you want a cat paw shaped dip in the loaf.
4. Preheat the oven to very hot (210 centigrade, 400 fahrenheit).
5. Bake the loaf for 25 minutes until golden brown. Tap the bottom of the loaf to check if it is done - it should sound like a drum.Cool on a wire rack and be prepared to defend against snackers.

Variations

Just vary the type of flour, add in seeds, nuts, herbs, garlic, fried onions, olives, sundried tomatoes or whatever takes your fancy. Adjust the amount of liquid if adding wet or oily ingredients. Shape into rolls, bake in a loaf tin, make a round loaf, the variations are endless. For rolls, this amount of dough will make about 13 rolls - weigh out roughly 90g pieces of dough for each roll. Reduce the baking time for rolls to about 15 minutes or so.

One of our favourites is just to substitute around 200g of the flour with multigrain or granary flour. It's also nice to roll the dough in sesame or poppy seeds.

For a delicious herb and garlic bread, gently saute a crushed clove of garlic with some dried herbs (eg basil, oregano) in a tablespoon of olive oil and add it into the dough with the water (reduce the amount of water slightly or you will need to add more flour to stop the dough being too wet).