And Give Us Our Daily Bread...

Bread has been my Everest for some time now. I've experimented with numerous recipes over the years and have had countless unsatisfactory loaves. About 5 years ago, when I managed to pin down an excellent pizza dough recipe (that I now use as a standard), I thought it could double as a bread recipe. And it did for a long time. But (and there's that ubiquitous but), it was never quite right. Never quite fluffy or light enough, and never strong enough to handle being sliced very thin. So naturally, more experimentation followed.

I now have a recipe that consistently produces beautifully light and fluffy loaves as well as rolls. The thing to keep in mind with bread (as with most dough recipes) is that the amounts of the ingredients vary each time you make it. Humidity, heat, consistency of the flour and the fat content of the milk all make a difference to the dough. Humid days require more flour, dry days require less (or more liquids). And my final tip: use bread flour. Regular plain or all purpose flour doesn't have enough gluten to hold the rise required for bread.

Ingredients:
4 cups bread flour
1 tbsp (roughly 16g) instant yeast
2 tsp sugar (caster/super fine)
2 tsp salt
2 eggs (lightly beaten)
30g/2tbsp butter
350 ml milk

Plus:
1 egg
2 tbsp milk or cream
whisk together for glazing bread

Method:
Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Heat milk and butter together in microwave for 2 minutes.

Place flour, yeast, sugar, salt and eggs in bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment (or you can mix by hand, but this takes longer). Mix till combined.

Add milk and butter and mix until dough starts to come together and away from the sides of the bowl. Change attachments to the dough hook and mix for 2 − 3 minutes.

Turn dough out and form into a ball. Place upside down into a lightly greased/oiled bowl (I use olive oil) then turn the right way up so the dough is coated with a little oil on all sides. Cover bowl with plastic wrap (glad wrap/cling wrap) and leave in a warm place to rise for at least 1 hour (or until dough is doubled in size).

Turn dough out and knead lightly for a few minutes. This helps to redistribute the carbon dioxide released by the yeast and will give you a lighter and fluffier bread.

Lightly grease the pan you're using to bake the bread in (loaf tin for a loaf or tray for rolls), shape bread and place in pan. Cover lightly with cling wrap (I use the same one I used earlier, but turned the other way round so there's no condensation. The condensation built up on the cling wrap will affect your bread and lead to less rise. Leave in a warm place to rise again for at least 1 hour (or until doubled in size).

Again, remove the dough and punch down and knead. Reshape, place in tin and liberally brush on egg and milk/cream mixture. Sprinkle bread with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, or leave plain. Place in preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes. When properly cooked, the bread should make a hollow sound when tapped.

Turn oven off and remove bread. Take bread out of tin, wrap in clean tea towel (this will catch the moisture coming off the bread and avoid soggy bread).

If you're making rolls, you can stuff them with cheese, meat, veggies or whatever you like. This recipe has been the most consistently reliable I've come up with. But remember, amounts of flour and liquids will vary according to the ambient temperature and humidity.