Easy Peasy Wholemeal Yeast Bread

We rarely buy bread any more and after many years of baking bread, I’ve settled on this as my standard bread recipe. I’ve been through all kinds of iterations with this dough — hand-mixing and kneading, using a stand mixer, sourdough and several bread machines but I’ve hit on a very reliable formula using a Panasonic bread machine to do my mixing and kneading. This method rarely fails so long as you look after your yeast. And the best thing about it is that it takes about 3 minutes to prepare the dough and about the same again to transfer it to tins. So it’s quick and really easy to fit around your day if you don’t have half an hour to spend putting the dough together and kneading it properly.

This isn’t artisan bread or bread that has any pretensions about it but it is reasonably healthy, isn’t full of the junk that is in mass-produced bakery bread and tastes pretty good. It’s also simple enough that nobody in my fairly fussy family objects to it. This bread is all about convenience. It’s about getting away from the additives and preservatives in mass-produced breads but that’s quick enough that you’ll actually have time to make it.

Ingredients

540ml water (400ml from the cold tap, 140 ml boiling)
60g olive oil
950g flour (50% strong brown, 50% strong white)
20g sugar
8g salt
9g powdered dried yeast

Method

1. Using an electronic scales, add the ingredients to the pan of the bread machine in the order listed above. Be careful to keep the yeast away from salt and sugar
2. Put the bread machine on the dough programme and let it do its thing
3. Make sure you don’t forget about the mix as this quantity is generally more than the capacity of the bread machine and it will make a mess of the machine if you forget about it.
4. Prepare two bread tins by brushing them with oil and then dusting with flour. I normally use semola for this but white flour will do
5. Turn out your dough onto a floured board, knock back and divide into two. Slice the top of the loaves three or four times with the knife and put them in the tins
6. Leave them somewhere reasonably warm for 30–60 minutes to reprove. Put a light tea-towel over them or if you have a proving bag knock yourself out. The tea-towel works fine for me.
7. Put them into the oven preheated to 200 degrees C for 20 minutes
8. Turn them out onto a wire tray immediately out of the oven
9. Try to resist cutting into them for the hot crusty heel end for 10 minutes or so…..

Tips

1. Make sure your yeast is fresh and well within date. I get much better results from tubs of Allinsons yeast that I keep in the fridge after opening. The sachets — not so good for some reason. They work but just not anywhere near as quickly or consistently.
2. Don’t let your flour get ancient and try to buy reasonably good quality. I currently use Marriages flour that I purchase in 16kg sacks from thelittlemill.ie. I make enough bread that I get through this in around 3 months which is fine.
3. The same recipe and method makes excellent pizza dough if you use grade 00 flour. You can make pizza dough from regular strong flour but it is much easier to stretch if you make it with 00.
4. If you have a family member who won’t eat wholemeal bread, start making this with 10% wholemeal flour and gradually increase to 50%. This is a surprisingly effective application of the boiling frog hypothesis.
5. I’ve tried going beyond 50% wholemeal flour but it gets increasingly difficult to get a good rise on the loaf.