This is something your mother or even grandmother would to do all the time but today it's a bit of a rarity, hopefully now we all have a little more time on our hands you can rediscover the joy of baking. It's so easy and so much fun.
Ingredients
- 600g strong white flour
- 1 level tsp salt
- 2 tbsp any oil
- 1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
- 300mls warm water, roughly
Method
- Place the flour, salt and oil into a mixer and bring together.
- Add the yeast and enough warm water form a soft dough, mix well untilk the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl and the gluten is now forming a stretchy dough.
- Tip onto a floured surface and knead well for 5 minutes.
- Return the dough to the bowl and cover with film and leave to double in size.
- Meanwhile pre heat the oven to 220C Gas 7.
- Once doubled in size, remove the film and tip onto the floured surface again.
- Now this time just gently knead, but not too roughly just for a few seconds, just to bring together.
- Form into a sausage shape roughly the length of a 2lb loaf tin, then fold the edges under.
- Pop into the tin and press into the sides and bottom.
- Recover with film and leave again to rise till just under double in size.
- Dust the risen loaf in a little flour.
- Make 3 diagonal slashes across the loaf and pop into the oven.
- Bake until well risen and browned, probably 15-20 minutes.
- Once cooked remove from then tin and leave to cool completely before trying to slice.
