Melbourne’s Bread Recipe – doesn’t need scales, although a measuring jug is handy.
This recipe will NOT work in a breadmaking machine. Traditional hand preparation only.
You need a large bowl (we use a washing up bowl for mixing, kept for the purpose), a wooden or plastic spoon for initial mixing, and some non-stick bread tins.
1 or 2 x 1.5kg bag strong white bread flour
1 or 2 x 1.5kg bag(s) wholemeal flour
This recipe works best with a mixture of flours, or all white flour, but there are better recipes for all wholemeal. Get the strongest flours that you can – “bakers grade”
OPTIONAL: Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, or similar to mix in OR
Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, onion seeds or similar to sprinkle on
OPTIONAL: A sachet of dried potato. The powdered stuff is best for the job, but the flakes are OK, and potato flour is best of all but expensive. Highly recommended if you like toast.
2 sachets of dried yeast. NO MORE, and you should use only one sachet if using 3kg or less of flour.
1 level tablespoon of salt per kilo of flour. NO LESS
15g of butter or margarine per kilo of flour.
900ml of water per 1.5kg of white flour and 1000ml of water per 1.5kg bag of wholemeal flour (plus whatever was recommended for the dried potato)
Tip the flour into the mixing bowl and combine the white and wholemeal thoroughly.
Rub in the butter or marge. (If you take the fat from the fridge, and shred it into the flour, it will rub in easier.) Mix in the yeast and the salt, making sure that they’re well distributed.
Mix in the potato flour (if used) and the sunflower or pumpkin seeds (if used).
Add the water. Easiest to add it all at once, then carefully mix with a spoon until it’s absorbed.
Knead. Then knead some more. Eventually the texture will change, and you can turn it out onto a floured table and put the bowl to one side. Keep kneading until it looks like bread dough ie elastic.
When you do the first mixing and kneading, the dough will at first be very sticky, then, as you knead it, it will gradually become more elastic, until eventually it hardly sticks to your hands at all. This might easily take 15 minutes, and is quite hard work. Little or no gas will form.
Put it back into the bowl, cover with oiled cling film, and leave it to rise in a warmish place. It will fill the bowl, and may overflow, so put the bowl on a tray. It’ll take quite a few hours because of the high salt content and the small amount of yeast starter.
Keep an eye on it. Doubling in volume is a good guide. Mix the bread in the morning, and schedule the cooking for late afternoon/early evening. Or mix in the evening, leave it to rise overnight and get up early to finish the proving and baking.
Turn it out onto a floured table, and knead it some more. It will be very spongy. It doesn’t require such a bashing this time, though. Cut or pull it into suitable pieces, and knead each piece into shape and put each into a buttered loaf tin (about a third full is good), or simply make sausage shaped loaves on a buttered baking tray. If you have a suitable weighing machine, traditional large loaves weigh around 850g before baking to give an idea of the size.
If you want to cut the top so that the loaf “blooms”, now is the time to do it.
Leave the loaves to rise for at least an hour in a warm kitchen. If you want to scatter seeds on the top, do so shortly before baking.
Put into a preheated oven at around 200C (fan ovens I’d go for 190C), and bake for around half an hour. The loaf should sound hollow when tapped. If using a tin, it can be worth turning the loaves out onto a rack and immediately returning them to the oven to form a bit more of a crust.
OPTIONAL: Putting a flat pan on the floor of the oven, and adding a small cup of water to it as you put the loaves in the oven gives a steamy atmosphere that improves the initial baking.
Makes loads of bread. Can be frozen, but let it cool completely before putting into plastic bags.
* High salt, low yeast, and long proving time is the key to good flavour development. Bread machine recipes all have too much yeast and too little salt.
* The potato flour makes superb toasting bread with a small, even crumb.
* The hard fat (butter or marge) contributes to a nice even texture and helps the keeping quality. If you use oil, the loaves will tend to have larger, uneven holes (like a ciabatta).
* In a domestic oven, probably 4 loaves at a time is the maximum batch size to avoid uneven cooking, unless you’re willing to swap them round halfway (which is not ideal for the baking).