Milk Loaf

I found this delicious bread recipe cut out from a 1976 cookbook of unknown origin.

It's flavoursome and has a great soft crumb that makes it perfect for sandwiches.


Make cheddar and Branston pickle sandwiches with it and relive your childhood!

Ingredients

450g strong white bread flour
50g butter, melted and cooled
325ml full-fat milk, bloodhot
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 (7g) sachet fast acting yeast (15g fresh yeast)

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, yeast, sugar and salt.

Add in the milk and butter and stir until it forms a dough.

Turn the dough out onto a clean worksurface and knead for 8 - 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic.

Lightly flour the work top and shape the dough into a round and place in a covered bowl. Leave to rise in a warm place for 1 hr.

After the hour, the dough should have risen to twice the original size. Carefully remove it from the bowl and knock some of the air out of the dough.

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Shape into a loaf shape and place in a buttered 800g silicon loaf tin. Cover and let rise again for 30 mins. You can also shape the dough into a free form shape and score it like I have above.

Bake for 40 minutes. The loaf should be a deep gold colour and will sound hollow when you tap the base.

Turn out and cool on a wire rack.

Harissa Bread

Harissa is a condiment that I fell in love with when I had a 2 week holiday in Tunisia. There, they serve it with bread and oil at the start of every meal. It's hot and spicy but also really tasty as it's got lots of garlic.

The Real Olive Co do an amazing harissa that they sell at the Temple Bar market in Dublin every Saturday. I think we must have worked our way through a dozen of jars in the last year!

As we always eat our harissa with bread, I thought it would work well as an ingredient in bread and I was right. The resulting bread has a faint hint of the heat and all the flavour and is amazing with cheese.

Ingredients

400g strong white bread flour
125g wholemeal flour
2 tbsp harissa
25ml olive oil
15g fresh yeast
10g salt
325ml water

Place the flours in a large mixing bowl and rub the yeast into the flour.

Add the salt, harissa, oil and water and mix with a spatula until it forms a dough.

Turn out onto a work surface and knead for 8 -10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Place in a bowl and leave, covered, in a warm place to rise for 1 1/2 hours.

The dough should have doubled in size in this time. Turn out onto a lightly-floured work surface and shape into a loaf.

Turn the oven to 220C at this point.

Place the loaf on a baking sheet, score with a razor blade and allow to rise again for 45 minutes.

Spray the inside of the oven with 15 squirts of water immediately before placing the loaf on the baking sheet inside.

Bake for 25 minutes, until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the base.

Cool on a wire rack.

Brown Soda Bread

Now, I couldn't have lived in Ireland for as long as I have without developing and refining a brown soda bread recipe.

I am still on an ongoing quest to make the perfectly moist and green-tinged brown bread of Joe's dreams. But this recipe has garnered many compliments and is easy to whip together at 10pm when you realise there is nothing in the house for breakfast in the morning.

If you don't have buttermilk in the house (which is often the case for me) you can make a good substitute by adding 2 tsp of lemon juice to 400ml of milk.

Ingredients

225g plain flour
225g wholemeal flour
1tsp bicarb of soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
25g butter, softened
1 egg
350 - 400ml buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 220C.

Mix the flours, bicarb and salt together in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub into the flour with your fingertips until you get a breadcrumb like texture.

In a jug, mix the egg and the buttermilk together and pour about 350ml into a well made in the centre of the flour mixture. Stir together with a wooden spoon until it comes together and forms a dough. The mixture should be soft but not sticky so add more milk or flour as necessary.

Turn the dough onto a floured work surface and gently shape into a round about 4cm deep.

Place on a baking tray and cut a deep cross in the top of the bread.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 200C and continue to bake for a further 30 mins.

The bread is done when it is a deep golden brown colour and sounds hollow when tapped on the base.

Cool on a wire rack.

French Baguettes

This baguette recipe uses a poolish which means that you have to start preparing it the night before. It's worth the work as a first foray into using ferments, although I will keep the ferment going for a day or so longer next time to get a more intense flavour.

There is no need to use special equipment for this bread. A couche would be great for letting the bread rise, but until I have a bigger kitchen, a well-floured tea-towel does the job.

This recipe will make 4 good sized baguettes.

Ingredients

Poolish -
300g strong white bread flour
300g water
1/2 tsp instant yeast (4g fresh yeast)

Dough -
605g strong white bread flour
300g water (slightly warm to the touch)
12g salt
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast (8g fresh yeast)
All the prepared poolish

Prepare the poolish at least 12 hours in advance. Mix together the flour, yeast and water until the mixture has the consistency of a smooth batter. Cover with cling film and a tea-towel and let ferment in a warm place overnight.

The next day, the poolish will have risen and look bubbly and smell faintly alcoholic.

Mix the dough by combining the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add all the poolish and the water and mix together until it starts to form a dough.

Turn the dough out onto the work surface (not floured! If you haven't already, get Richard Bertinet's book, Dough. It's an amazing resource on how to knead dough)

Knead the dough for around 8-10 minutes, until it comes away cleanly from the work-top and is smooth, supple and pliant. Coat the dough lightly in flour and shape into a ball.

Place the dough in a mixing bowl and cover with a tea-towel. Let the dough rest until it is nearly doubled in size, around 1hr to 1hr and a half.

Pre-heat your oven at this point to 200C.

Once the dough has doubled, gently remove it from the bowl and knock it back on the work suface.

Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces (I weigh each one to be sure, as it helps with the second rising if they are all exactly equal) Shape the four pieces into rounds and let rest for a further 15 minutes.

Shape each piece of dough into a baguette shape by rolling the round into a sausage shape and folding each length onto the other, creating a seam at the bottom of the baguette that will give it strength.

Place each baguette into a fold of well-floured tea-towel on a baking tray. Ensure that there is a fold of towel between each baguette, so they don't stick to each other, and that there is room for the baguettes to rise.

Cover the shaped baguettes with another tea-towel and let rise again for an hour in a warm place (I use the hob-top, away from the oven door so they get the general warmth with none of the direct heat).

Once the baguettes are risen, score the tops with a razor blade and transfer carefully to a baking sheet for putting in the oven.

Baguettes get their crisp, chewy crust from being baked in a moist, steamy oven so I place a roasting tin with 200ml of water in the bottom of the oven about 10 mins before I am going to bake the baguettes. This gives the oven plenty of continuous steam.

Bake the baguettes on the middle shelf for 20 minutes until they are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the base.

Cool on a wire rack and then eat with cheese and wine!