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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Oil Bread, or the soft dough bread

Bread, the staple food that we used to buy at the "end of the day" reductions. Problem is, is full of anti fungal, alcohol, weird kind of fats and other stuff you would not really want to eat, I think.
Now, I bake my own bread in the electric oven, and we always have it in the house to accompany our meals.
The recipe I use now will give you an elastic dough that is easily stretched to make focaccia, which is a kind of pizza, filled with mozzarella and ham, usually, and covered with another layer of dough. It is lovely to eat, it keeps for a few days and is good eaten hot or cold. My husband takes it to work for his lunch almost every day.
Now for the recipe and procedure.

Ingredients:

500 grams of plain flour
300 ml of water
60 ml of olive oil
1 sachet of dried yeast
salt to taste

Mix everything together, adding nuts, olives, turmeric, anything you fancy really in your bread. Or just stick to the basic and enjoy :)

I let the bread-maker do this part of the work for me, I've already said my bread machine is worth her weight in gold and I'm not exaggerating.

Anyway, once you have a nice soft ball, place it in a bowl and cover it with a clean tea towel. I place it then in the cold oven, so it is away from temperature change that may occur in the kitchen.

After about 2 hours you will see the ball has almost doubled in size and so is ready to be baked. Take olive oil and brush your loaf with it. Now, if you are lucky enough to own a cast iron pot, place it in the pot with the lid on and in the oven. 

Switch the oven on to 200 degrees Celsius and let cook for about 30 minutes, or until you see the crust is starting to form.
At this stage, take the loaf out of the pot and place it on the oven rack and let cook until you are satisfied with the crust outside.
And here it is:
Baking your own bread will save you about 30% on the shop bought one, and most important, will spare your body the added crap ;)

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