Last Christmas, three people, individually and with no collusion whatsoever, each gifted me with a Jamie Oliver cookbook. Luckily, they were three different cookbooks, but what a recipe for disaster that could have been! (Cue laughter. Oh well, I thought that was quite funny.) I wasn’t sure if that was a hint (learn to cook decent meals, woman!) or a vote of encouragement for my efforts to date, but obviously chose to believe the latter.
I quickly and completely fell in love with baking bread. The kneading (therapeutic way to spend 15 minutes, don’t you think?), watching it rise, the divine smell permeating your whole house, and then breaking he crust while it’s still warm…mmmm…heaven.
As I was living alone at the time, I made bread rarely, and when I did most of it was given away so it wouldn’t spoil. Since moving in with S, home-made bread has made a more frequent appearance. Cheesy bread has been a great hit, especially when a mixture of cheeses has been added to the dough. Now that I’m comfortable with the basics of bread-making, I’d love to experiment a little. I’ve been thinking of making sourdough starter, and making all our own bread. But to begin with a smaller experiment, may I present
Potato and rosemary bread
400g potatoes, boiled, peeled, mashed
650g strong white bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon runny honey
1 x 7g sachet of dry yeast
300mL warm water
handful of rosemary leaves (from our garden!)
Combine flour and salt in a large bowl. Add mashed potatoes and work them into the flour until you have a reasonably even crumbly mixture. Make a well in the middle.
Add honey and yeast to the warm water and mix until the yeast is dissolved. Pour into the flour well. Mix the flour gradually into the liquid and start kneading. You may need to add a little more flour – aim for a dough that’s elastic but not sticky.
Shape into a ball, place on a floured tray, and score with a knife. Leave 40min to prove, in a warm dry place. It should bout double in size.
Knead again for a few minutes. Add rosemary. Divide dough onto however many loaves/rolls you wish, place on floured tray, score with a knife and leave to prove again for 30-40min.
Bake at 180C until loaves sound hollow when the underside is tapped (about 40-45min for a loaf, 30-35 for rolls).
This is a cobbled together recipe as I could not seem to find a decent one online anywhere. May as well keep it here as it worked quite well, and I’ll quickly forget how I made it! It has a dense cakey consistency which I love, though S still prefers the cheesy masterpieces.
