COSGRAVE CORNER: Recipe of the Week: Bread

Serving Size; Jesus I have seen one person eat all this bread. It’s mostly a matter of ratios.

Ingredients/Materials

You’ll need;

• A reasonably sized bowl.A tray Upon which things can be baked. A baking tray, so to speak.
• A Knife
• 3 Cups flour
• 1 Tablespoon yeast
• 1 Tablespoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 2 Cups water
• More flour to knead.(approx 2 cups)

Optional

• A little oil.

Method

How to Make Bread. The Most basic staple of Western Civilisation for Millennia. You would not do well in a zombie apocalypse let me tell you.

1. Add 2 cups of flour, the yeast, sugar and salt to a large bowl and mix them.
2. Add the 2 cups of water to the mixture and combine to form a spongy dough, it’ll look kinda gross, this is fine.
3. Let it settle for a minute, have a cup of tea, and then put in another two cups of flour. You might need more, so keep it to hand.
4. Knead it, this will require muscles, so it may take some time, but if you’ve got good strength in your wrists, you should be fine. (Kneading is basically forming it into a ball, and folding it onto itself, turning it, and repeating, You watch GBBO, you know) Knead it until it’s springy, and it’s not sticky.
5. Either flour or oil up your baking tray, shape the bread into an approximation of a loaf, and leave the bread to prove for at least 45 minutes, but up to two hours is helpful, to make sure it rises as much as it can. When it’s risen do a few cuts on the top so it looks cool.
6. Place dough into a pre-heated oven at approximately 200 degrees C for 20-25 minutes, you may have to turn it once at ten minutes so it cooks evenly. To check that it’s cooked, stab it with a sharp knife in the middle and see if it comes out clean. Or it’ll be a rich brown. Either way, once it’s done, take it out so that it can sit, and wait at least 15 minutes to start cutting it so it can rest. It’ll be hard to resist.

Tips.

Fresh bread is the greatest thing ever, and people pretending to be coeliacs, who you don’t want to hang out with. (I have yet to meet a real Coeliac who doesn’t look at bread like they want it inside of them)You can make this bread dough into pretty much anything: small rolls, doughballs, more stuff, I’ll teach all that later. Just nail how to this before we go crazy.