My bread recipes

Basic recipe

  50 g fresh yeast or 2 tbsp "active baking" yeast
  100 g margarine
  800 g wholemeal flour
  700 g plain flour
  50 g wheatgerm
  1 tbsp salt
  1 l water

With fresh yeast:
Heat the water to body temperature, crumble the yeast into the warm water and whisk until it has dissolved. Melt the margarine and grease the tins, add the rest of the margarine to the water and yeast. Add all the wholemeal flour, salt and wheatgerm and enough plain flour to make the dough solid but still stirrable. Work the dough for about 10 minutes, then add flour until it leaves the bowl.

With "active baking" yeast:
Dissolve the yeast with 1 1/2 tsp sugar in 250ml warm water, cover with clingfilm and leave to reconstitute for 10-15 mins. Mix the wholemeal flour, wheatgerm, salt and some of the plain flour. Melt the margarine and grease the tins. Heat the rest of the water to body temperature, add to the reconstituted yeast and pour into the flour mixture with the margarine. Work the dough for about 10 minutes, then add flour until it leaves the bowl.

Let the dough raise for 60-90 minutes, then shape it into loaves and let it raise for another 20-30 minutes in the tins. Bake for an hour in a preheated oven at 175 C.

Makes 3 big (2lb) loaves.

Additions and variations

Variation 1: Sunflower and sesame seed

This is my favourite variation - it is very tasty and it seldom goes wrong. Add 3-4 tbsp sesame seed and 3 tbsp sunflower seed to the flour. You can also add 1 - 1 1/2 tbsp blue poppy seed, which makes the bread much lighter (more airy).

Variation 2: Rye and aniseed

Replace some of the wholemeal flour with 3-400g rye flour, and add 3 tsp aniseed. You can vary the amount of wholemeal and rye flour to make for a darker, heavier bread; I find that up to 65-70% wholemeal+rye may work out well, depending on what kind of yeast I have.

Variation 3: Rye and syrup

Replace some of the wholemeal flour with rye flour as above. Add 2 tbsp heated golden syrup. This makes a very heavy (compact) brown bread. Be sure to have enough yeast, preferably fresh, or else the bread will not raise properly!

Variation 4: Wholewheat

Soak 2-3 dl whole wheat in half of the water overnight. Use slightly less wholemeal flour to make sure the bread raises properly. It is essential that you use fresh yeast for this bread.

Comments

If you have fresh yeast, that is by far preferable to any other kind of yeast. You can be sure that the bread raises well, even more than you had anticipated. And the taste is superior to dry or "active baking" yeast. Dry yeast sachets will never give a fully satisfactory result, and with the heavier variations, you run the risk of your bread not raising at all.

I usually make portions of 1/2 or 2/3 of the one given above. However, I use the same amount of salt (1 tbsp) even with the reduced portions. A 2/3 portion usually covers my own consumption for about a week.

Last updated: 5-Jun-95 Back to my front page