Our daily bread
With more time on my hands, I've been able to go back to baking our bread instead of buying it at over £1 a loaf for bog standard, not particularly nice pre-sliced bread.
This is more like it - 66p for a 1.5kg bag of strong flour will make two large loaves. All you need to add is a teaspoon of dried yeast per loaf (£1.24 for a tub which will make at least 20 loaves), a teaspoon of sugar per loaf (80p per kilo, so less than a penny a loaf), and a tablespoon of salt per loaf (34p for a kilo, so again less than a penny a loaf). Then around 900mls of hand-hot water - tap water is fine.
With a little elbow-grease, time to rise (and you can ignore it for hours while it does this), and half an hour in a hot oven you can have this:
for about 40p per loaf.
Ohhh yes...
This is more like it - 66p for a 1.5kg bag of strong flour will make two large loaves. All you need to add is a teaspoon of dried yeast per loaf (£1.24 for a tub which will make at least 20 loaves), a teaspoon of sugar per loaf (80p per kilo, so less than a penny a loaf), and a tablespoon of salt per loaf (34p for a kilo, so again less than a penny a loaf). Then around 900mls of hand-hot water - tap water is fine.
With a little elbow-grease, time to rise (and you can ignore it for hours while it does this), and half an hour in a hot oven you can have this:
for about 40p per loaf.
Ohhh yes...
have you tried making sourdough bread? I've got a starter made with dried yeast (my kitchen does not harbour any natural yeast, just mould and vinegar flies) it sits on my working top for most of the week, getting topped up with brown flour and water occasionally, then on a Sunday 75% goes in to the bread, and the rest gets topped up again for the following week.
ReplyDeleteIt takes longer to rise than normal bread, but makes for lovely holey crumb and a chewy crust with some real heft to it.
...I'm well into my bread atm, so much tastier and chepaer than the shop stuff
Husbeast tried making a sourdough starter a while ago but it sulked in the bottom of the bowl and refused to do anything, so it was released into the wild (the compost heap).
ReplyDeleteI might have to give it another go, although at the moment I'm having enough trouble trying to remember to keep the little'un, husbeast, myself, the chickens and the cat fed and watered. I'm not sure the bread would get a look in...
That's a good point, my starter does tend to get neglected for days at a time, but a dollop of brown flour usually perks it back up. Apparently, if you've got a good one, they can sytay dormant in the freezer until you want them too, but mine gets used regularly
ReplyDelete