Making Bread

I've always loved bread, that fixation was completely solidified when I was sent over for an 8 weeks training course in Hannover, Germany at Prakla Seismos. We were set up in a country hotel just outside of Hannover with a bed and breakfast arrangement.

Every morning we would be piling up into the hotel restaurant where the spread was laid out fresh every morning. It's a full western breakfast with all manner of bread baked fresh every morning. There were cereals, eggs to your liking, cold cuts, sausages, fresh fruits, milk and a smorgasbord of pastries. When you break the bread, the aroma and steam rise up like mist on a cold meadow.

Bread feature significantly since then whenever we can lay our hands on fresh loaves that is. In Europe it is perhaps much easier to do since bread is a big part of the daily meal plan. Supermarkets bake their bread fresh at least twice daily on their premises. You can pick up a fresh loaf for breakfast before work or in the evening after work, it'll still be warm by the time you get to your kitchen. Often our baquettes were half eaten by the time we reached the house.

Making home made bread seems like a natural thing to do. Baquette was initially the objective but we settled for artisan loaves until we get more familiar with the entire breadmaking process. The simplest was the "No Knead Homemade Bread" recipe which ca be baked in an oven for 45mins after 3-4hrs of proofing requiring minimal kneading.

This was how we got along:
1. Mix 1 teaspoon of yeast + 1.5 teaspoon of salt with 300ml of warm water (make sure it's not hot) in a mixing bowl
2. Add 3.5 cups of regular flour
3. Mixed well, add handfuls of flour for dryer consistency dough
4. Put the dough into a bowl, cover with saranwrap and let it sit in (warmish) room temperature for the yeast to do it's work. When it's done the dough would've doubled in size with air pockets in the dough.
5. After 3-4 hours, knead the bread for another 15mins, afterwhich set it in a dutch oven to proove a bit more while waiting for the baking oven to heat up (200 deg C)
6. When the baking oven is ready, slide in the dutch oven with the dough inside it. Leave for 30mins.
7. After 30 mins check on the bread, replace the cover of the dutch oven and leave for another 15 minutes.
8. At the end of the 15mins your bread will be done. Voila! Fresh homemade loaf.

Our 1st ever loaf: looks nice, but it was a rather dense loaf. We inadvertently killed the yeast when using boiling water to the mix.

Our 2nd attempt : turned out much better, we use water temps that makes yeast very happy

Our 3rd loaf : added fresh roastmarry for that heavenly aroma when the loaf is taken out of the warm oven. The dough post 15min final kneading after 3-4hrs proofing set on baking paper inside our make do dutch oven.

Our third load : the dough on it's last proofing while waiting for the oven to warm up to 200 deg C.

Our third loaf : the aroma is just heavenly and crust golden brown after 45mins in the oven.

Our fourth loaf : perfect breakfast combination- coffee, a slice of homemade loaf topped up with cream cheese with a bit of jaggery for a dash of sweet-salty flavor.

We are well on our way with our breadmaking adventure, it was shaky at the start but it was fun and very fulfilling ... literally!