Best thing since sliced bread!

Breakfast bread

We love baking fresh bread for (or with) the children. This is part of our Food for Life Gold Award commitment and it means we can control what goes into our loaves. Unlike shop bought, sliced bread our recipe uses no (or lower) salt, no (or lower) sugar and added flavours like herbs, grated vegetables, even spices and fruit. Here’s a basic bread recipe that we use to make breakfast bread. Now, if you’re not baking for tens of small children, you might be thinking, “What am I going to do with seven loaves of bread and how will they fit in my oven?”, and, if that’s you, we’ve done the maths so you can make just one.

Ingredients

Makes 7 loaves (each loaf yields 10 slices)

• 1.5 kg white bread flour

• 1.5 kg whole meal bread flour

• 30g yeast

• 1 tsp sugar (optional)

• 2L water more or less

• 3 tbsp vegetable oil

Makes 1 loaf (10 slices)

• 215g white bread flour

• 215g wholemeal bread flour

• 5g yeast

• Pinch sugar (optional)

• 300ml water (more or less)

• 1/2 tbsp vegetable oil

Method

• Mix yeast with sugar and lukewarm water.

• Add the wet ingredients in the flour, mix until well combined

• Rest for 30 min in a container covered with a damp cloth.

• Mix again, folding the dough on itself for 5 min, rest another 30 minutes.

• Repeat once more and rest until double in size. This will help to mix the ingredient well in the dough and develop a gluten structure.

• If using a kitchen mixer you can skip all this by just kneading the dough for 10 minutes, leave it to rise until double in size covered with a damp cloth.

• Once well risen, shape into 7 (or 1) bread loaves and proove in loaf tins lined with parchment paper until double in size.

• Make sure to keep the loaves (loaf) covered to avoid drying the top.

• Finally, bake the bread for 35 min at 185C, leave to cool 15 minutes before releasing from the tins.