This was one of the first successes I had. It’s a basic white loaf recipe, I think from before I got the James Morton book to be honest – possibly this one by Paul Hollywood.
The main recipe I use now has about 50ml more water, no butter and only one sachet of yeast and it seems to do the job.
This was also before I understood the benefits of scoring the bread. I always assumed it was purely aesthetic but I’ve since found out it’s a bit more than that. The way you score the bread changes the way it rises in the oven and influences the shape of it. From what I’ve read the way I scored the bread here possibly led to a slightly flatter loaf that if I’d scored in a slightly simpler way, such as one slash down and one across. One thing I’ll try for a future post is to score two similarly shaped loaves in different ways to see how it affects them. How’s that for an enticing promise eh? Try to contain yourselves.
A term I’ve discovered recently is the “crumb” of the bread. I was only familiar with bread crumbs before, but the crumb also refers to the inside of the bread, in particular the size and distribution of the holes. Whilst reading about it online I found out there are people who get slightly obsessed about the crumb of their bread (obsessives on the internet? Never!). They seem to get all aquiver over the size of each others holes… Disgusting.
I believe that the amount of water is a major contributor to the hole size – more water = larger holes. Anyway, the crumb in this bread seemed to have fairly small holes and an even distribution. The bread I’ve made more recently has more water and no fat, so I think that has caused my more recent efforts have a more uneven crumb, which I actually quite like. As time goes on I’m sure I’ll start to understand more.
Also this bread was kneaded – in the James Morton book there are some no knead recipes which I was sceptical about but they really do work. I’ll post a picture of a no-knead one as I was surprised how easy and effective it was.
So this was number one of my white loaves, I’ve made many since and I’m sure more will make their way to this blog in due course.
This looks great!
Cheers! It’s really satisfying when you get one that turns out how you wanted it. Almost as satisfying as stuffing it into my face afterwards… Almost.
Ha! Oh yes,a good result at the end is the best reward!