I started to make bread a few years ago, because I wanted to improve the quality of my feeding. After reading lots of blogs and online forums, I failed trying to make many breads and sourdough. Yet, I kept practicing with different recipes, with different organic flours, with white flour and wholemeal flour, and I got it when I discovered organic dried yeast. When you get to know how to make it, then you don´t want to buy bread anymore. I read about this many times, and I thought that it was exaggerated, but it is totally true. Now, when I eat an industrial bread at some restaurants, it hasn´t flavor, and its texture is completely different.
Just notice that you have to spend some time learning and practicing, and you need to pay attention to the process. I also warn you that your family is going to eat the bread you made in half an hour, but don´t worry, the effort is well worth it.
Even though I´m still a beginner in the art of making bread, now I´ll tell you in detail the way to make the type of bread I make well; ingredients, steps, and a video of our YouTube channel.
We need the following INGREDIENTS;
- 12.70 ounces of wholemeal spelt flour
- 6.35 ounces of strength spelt flour
- 0.09 gallons or 0.66 pints of water
- 0.42 ounces of non salted butter
- 1 level tea spoon of salt (the World Health Organization recommends not to exceed the daily intake of 0.17 ounces of salt)
- 1 level tea spoon of raw whole brown cane sugar (the World Health Organization recommends not to exceed the daily intake of 0.88 ounces of sugar of any kind including panela)
- 1.76 ounces of sunflower seeds
- 1.59 ounces of raisins
- 1.59 ounces of small bits of nuts
- 0.32 ounces of dried yeast to make bread
And if all these are organic products, then better for our health. Watch out for binders included in some brands of salt.
STEP by step;
1- mix only the flour and the water, cover with a cloth, and let it rest 30 min.
2- knead while adding dried yeast , and keep doing that for another 3 min., cover it with a cloth, and let it rest for 1 hour, ideally inside of the oven only with the light on.
3- mix the olive oil or the butter with the brown sugar and the salt, and let it cool to avoid killing the yeast
4- take the dough out of the oven, and we shall see that our first bread fermentation raised the dough´s size. Then knead for another 3 min. while adding oil or butter, with salt and brown sugar. Cover it with a cloth, and let it rest 35-40 min.
5- we shall see that our second bread fermentation raised the dough again. Then knead for another 3 min. while adding the sunflower seeds, raisins and nuts. Or instead, you may just stick the nuts on top of the dough. Cover it with a cloth, and let it rest 30-35 min.
6- we shall see that our third bread fermentation raised the dough once more. Now take a tray out of the oven, and heat the oven up to 392º F
7- cover the tray with baking paper and nothing else, and fold the paper to make it fit to the size of the tray
8- fill a baking dish with a full glass of water, in order to evaporate and to prevent the bread crust from hardening
9- with a plastic and flexible pastry shovel, scratch the sides of the dough, while pooring it slowly in the baking paper, trying to avoid the volume from breaking. You can shape it if you want, but you don´t need to make cuts on top of the dough, because it is not a compact dough
10- put a piece of foil on top of the dough just like a shield to prevent the dough from burning
Otherwise, we can toast too much the bread crust, as in the picture below. You may open the oven in the middle of cooking, and you can cover the bread with foil, but you´ll loose heat opening the door of the oven.
11- put the baking dish in the lowest part of the oven, the tray with the dough on top of it, lower the heat at 356º F, and let it bake for 1 hour
12- take it out of the oven, and put the bread on top of a sieve or a strainer, to let humidity evaporate from the bread during 30 min.
After half an hour it will still be warm. We can cut it to see how it looks inside. Ideally we should see small uniform gaps between the crumbs. This means that the whole bread has been cooked well, and to the touch it will be spongy when pressed.
If we have large gaps under the bread crust, as in the following picture, then the bottom part will be more pressed and not so cooked.
Enjoy it! , and afterwards cover it with a cloth.
And try this bread with Canary Islands different tasty cheeses.
Thank you very much for the visit, and see you soon!
