Daily bread

So, today's essential shopping dash out to the corner shop was for washing up liquid and milk, as both were in short supply, and with no prospect at all of an online delivery... Apparently the shop had had a full delivery of milk, but that was at 2pm and I got in at 4pm - when I asked when they'd next get some in, the shop staff regaled me (from an appropriate distance) with stories. They've limited milk purchases to one per person, so one family came in with all 3 kids, two of whom were barely able to stagger along, gave them all some money and a 2 litre jug of milk, and all queued up and paid separately. So that's 20 pints of milk... New notices up in the shop about abusing staff, too. Some people are such tossers.

But, back to the point. Bread.

Spoiler: finished loaf.

I'm not a great eater of bread at home. I buy sandwiches at work most days (despite frequent broken promises to myself to stop doing that and bring nourishing home-made things in instead) and that tends to be enough. But when I do fancy bread (and the bought-sandwiches option isn't available), I quite enjoy making it. For a while, I had a breadmaker; but it wasn't very efficient, and it took up a lot of space, so when it packed up I didn't replace it.

When I came back to baking bread after the machine died, I used Paul Hollywood's white bread recipe - but am gradually straying away from it; so this is a variant.

I started off with 400g of strong white flour, and 100g of rye flour. I like the nuttiness of rye, but not enough that I want too much; and I don't have that much left. After that it will be buckwheat flour, bought for this year's pancakes and not used... 500g of whatever flour you have as long as it's not self-raising...

Two sachets or 14g of dried yeast (this is more than most recipes would suggest); I use Alsa brand which I bring back from France each time I go; have a small stockpile of this which is just as well as my birthday trip to Paris in April is 99.9% likely to be cancelled...

Two teaspoons of salt. 40g of soft butter (with other recipes, he substitutes oil. Some fat content is meant to make the bread keep longer).

And I like seeds in my bread. This time, I went for panchpuran (in this case fennel, cumin, nigella, fenugreek and yellow mustard; there are variations) - about 2 big tablespoonsful.

Ingredients ready to go.

300ml of water. Mr H says "warm"; I go for "hottish" - but it comes out of the tap on whatever "hot" is.  Anything over about 60C kills the yeast, but my hot water is only set for about that.

Rub the butter in in its corner, stir it all together, add the water (I usually add most of it, and then inevitably end up adding all the rest; you might need a bit less if it's all white flour.) Gather it up into a blob in the bowl. You might not be able to get all of it, but you can tip those bits on top once you start kneading.

Pre-kneading...

Spread a tablespoon or so of oil on your kitchen counter, and start kneading.

Mr H says knead for 10 mins (there's a video here of him showing some schoolchildren in Hitchin how to bake bread. Kneading starts at 3:15. Sexism starts from the beginning.) I am pathetic and have no biceps, so I give it 5 mins. But it does look different - smooth and I can see the gluten developing. And then I cover it with cling film (I bought a Huge roll of cling film years ago and am still using it; once it's used I'll have to find something else because plastic...) and leave it to rise.

Post-kneading, pre-rising...

Because it was 5C outside, I didn't leave it on the granite worktop in the kitchen; I put it very near the radiator in the living room. 45 minutes later, it was nearly hitting the cling-film, so I brought it back into the kitchen and put it onto a floured bench.

And lo, it is risen.

Then I knocked it back - just kneaded it but only for about 10 seconds - and shaped it into a rough log, and put it in a loaf tin. You don't need a loaf tin, you can also shape it into a round, but I like toast, and my toaster's not one of those fancy ones that deals with odd-shaped bread. Anything other than Warburton's (other brands are available) and I have to extract the toast with a knife.

Then I set a timer for 30 and 45 mins, wrapped the bread loosely in a tea towel (I keep a linen one for the purpose; no idea why, purely psychological) and put it back near the radiator to prove. When the first timer went off, I heated the oven to gas 7 (220C). When the second timer went off it looked like this. I suspect this means it rose too fast - but whatever.

Living proof

I took a sharp knife and made some shallow slashes on the top, and rubbed a bit of flour in. Then baked it for 35 minutes.

Et voilà.  Tasty bread.

Imagine Paul Hollywood saying "that's a nice crumb, that" and then devour.

Variants; I've used fennel seeds, chopped up olives (replacing butter with olive oil for a veggie loaf), poppy seeds, mustard seeds. This also makes nice breadbuns, particularly if you put them close together and then you get the kind you rip apart... If I ever find the bag of mixed chopped peppers I'm sure is in the freezer, I might try doing one of those roulad-y things with roast peppers and pesto...

Anyway, courage, fellow shut-ins and thank you to anyone still having to go out to do an essential job; thoughts are with you.