When I first started baking bread I wanted to do one of those french sticks or batch loaves that had that mottled effect on the crust. I found out that I needed 'special' ingredients for it (ie rice flour) so couldn't be bothered at the time - it was enough of a challenge just to get my standard white bread right!.
Although the correct name is 'Dutch crust' it is commonly in most supermarket bakeries as 'Tiger' bread.
This weekend I bought some ground rice and decided to take the plunge last night.
My family eats a lot of my bread very quickly, so I always bake two loaves at a time - if you just want to do one, simply halve the ingredients.
As with my other recipes, Bold type denotes normal instructions - you can't really skip these, and Italic type are my tips, observations and notes - skip them if you like, but I hope you find them useful.
Basic White Bread Recipe (for two loaves)
- 1000g strong white flour
- 3 tsp sea salt - normal salt will do at a pinch
- 3 tsp sugar
- 30g unsalted butter, cubed
- 2 x 7g sachet or 4 tsp of fast action dried yeast
- 600ml / 1pt lukewarm water
Topping Recipe (for two loaves)
- 150 gr rice flour or ground rice
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp fast action yeast
- 200 gr warm water
- 1 tsp oil
Basic White Bread Method
Switch the kettle on to boil some water.
In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, salt, sugar and yeast.
It's not essential, but I like to use a whisk to combine them - this has the added benefit of effectively sieving the ingredients which makes the mixture lighter and less prone to clumping when the liquid is added.
Add the butter to the mixture and rub in by pinching it and rubbing it between your thumbs and fingers in the flour, then make a well in the centre of the mixture.
You'll know when you've finished rubbing in the butter when you can't find any large lumps of it in the flour. Don't use margarine - the Hairy Bikers have a very good reason for this : "Because it's crap"....
Fill a measuring jug with 600ml or about a pint of lukewarm water, then pour into the well you made in the dry ingredients.
Lukewarm water recipe : 1/3 boiling water to 2/3 cold water.
It needs to be warm as that will activate the yeast. Too cold and it will take ages for your dough to rise, too hot and you will kill the yeast and you will end up with dwarf bread. As Terry Pratchet has written - dwarf bread is great because it lasts a very long time, mainly because is very hard and no-bugger will eat it.
Being 'waterwise'...
One thing to note is that just few drops of water can make a lot of difference to your bread.
- Use too little and your dough will be very hard to kneed and won't rise.
- Use too much, and you get a very sticky dough which is just messy and will be prone to collapsing after it has risen.
I've found that the best way to address this is to use slightly more water than necessary to start with (I'm talking a teaspoon or so here not a cup OK?) and adjust down by a tsp or so on subsequent bakes. If your dough is too sticky you can always add a bit more flour whilst you are kneading it whereas it is more difficult (but not impossible) to add more water once your dough has come together. You'll get a feel for it in the end - I've been training myself to get a 'feel' for how much to use as I am terrible for wanting to follow recipes to the letter regardless of the results!
Watch off, ring's off - time to get sticky fingers...
Either with a fork or with your hands, gradually mix the water and flour together until a fairly stiff dough forms.
Many bakers use this opportunity to get their fingers sticky, but I don't like that as it is inevitable that the phone will ring or I'll have to answer the door or something + I just plain don't like having sticky hands. I use a large tined fork to gradually 'erode' the walls of flour into the well of water. I don't know if this gets better results, but it seems to work for me.
Get your hands in the bowl once the dough gets too stiff to stir. Ideally you should be able to lift the ball of dough out leaving the bowl fairly clean with virtually no 'loose' flour left in the bowl.
Take a large bowl and very lightly grease it.
Anti washing up tip : if you ended up with a fairly clean bowl after mixing your dough, just reuse that one
Pop your dough in the bowl, lightly sprinkle the ball of dough with flour, cover with cling film or a shower cap and rest in a warm(ish) place for about an hour or until the dough has risen and roughly doubled in size.
Just a little bit of olive oil, veg oil or butter rubbed around the bowl with a piece of kitchen roll normally does the trick - you could even use a light sprinkling of flour. It's just to make it easy to remove from the bowl once risen.
I sometimes use a shower cap that I've nicked from a hotel instead of cling film - as long as they don't get dough all over them you can re-use them as well (Thanks again to Si and Dave for that tip!)
As far as a 'warmish' place is concerned, I put my dough on the TV unit we have. Underneath is the set top box which generates just the right amount of gentle warmth. If you're posh and have a proving drawer in your cooker then that is ideal (and I'm very jealous of you!).Put it in the airing cupboard at your own risk. I don't, as I had a rather disturbing experience doing that as a child - my Mum wasn't happy - we were washing dough out of towels and sheets for weeks!.
After an hour remove the dough from the bowl and 'knock back'.
Just punch the air out of it gently with your knuckles and gently knead it for a couple of minutes
Shape into two loaves and place side by side on a baking tray lined with baking parchment.
Rest for the loaves for about an hour until roughly doubled in size.
If you want to make just normal loaves you can skip the next 'topping' part and just get on with baking them
The Topping
Mix the ground rice, salt, sugar and yeast together in a small bowl. Gradually stir in the boiling water.
I'm not entirely sure that using boiling water is necessary - I have a feeling that that will just kill the yeast, but it probably helps in making the ground rice cells swell up.
Whisk the mixture until you have a consistency similar to thick wallpaper paste, then leave it to cool.
Oh - the recipe that i was following for this was really odd - it seemed to be for an 'industrial' amount of topping. I've adjusted for this in this recipe so dot be surprised if you have just enough to go round rather than the copious amount of stuff that you can see in my photos! This is why I haven't referenced the blog that I got the recipe from as I don't want to get anyone confused...
After about 10 minutes when the mixture has cooled add the oil to the mixture then spread it all over the loaves using a spoon.
I forgot the oil last night, but it still seemed to turn out ok...
Preheat the oven to 210c / 190c fan / 410f / gas mark 6
When your loaves have doubled in size, bung them in your pre-heated oven for about 30-35 minutes, but check them after 25 minutes.
Having a clean oven door is great - you can watch the bread rise before your eyes and it also makes it easy to keep a check on your loaves without opening the oven door and losing the heat.
It's worth investing a couple of quid in an oven thermometer as well as you cant necessarily trust what the dial on the cooker says - I used burn stuff all over the place until I followed the recommendation from Heston to get a cheapo thermo...
Once baked, remove the bread from the oven (well what else are you going to do?) and place the bread on a rack to cool.
All the books and TV programmes say to tap the bottom of the loaf and it should sound hollow. Whilst it makes one feel all professional, I'm not 100% sure that this it's foolproof. I tend to do things by eye - if the crust looks nice and browned and there has been a nice rise in the oven (aka oven 'spring' )and the loaf has been cooking for roughly the guide amount of time, then I take the bread out of the oven...
Many bakers use this opportunity to get their fingers sticky, but I don't like that as it is inevitable that the phone will ring or I'll have to answer the door or something + I just plain don't like having sticky hands. I use a large tined fork to gradually 'erode' the walls of flour into the well of water. I don't know if this gets better results, but it seems to work for me.
Press the dough into the loose mixture to pick it up, turn it then press it again. You can tip it all out onto the work-surface it you like, but I use the 'clean bowl' method as an indication that the dough is ready for kneading.
- The gluten molecules get more stretchy the more you knead the dough.
Pop your dough in the bowl, lightly sprinkle the ball of dough with flour, cover with cling film or a shower cap and rest in a warm(ish) place for about an hour or until the dough has risen and roughly doubled in size. 
After an hour remove the dough from the bowl and 'knock back'.
Oh - the recipe that i was following for this was really odd - it seemed to be for an 'industrial' amount of topping. I've adjusted for this in this recipe so dot be surprised if you have just enough to go round rather than the copious amount of stuff that you can see in my photos! This is why I haven't referenced the blog that I got the recipe from as I don't want to get anyone confused...
Once baked, remove the bread from the oven (well what else are you going to do?) and place the bread on a rack to cool.
