Hello friends, I hope you had a good week!

Today I wanted to share my ninth Fleeting Thought with you. If you’re reading one of my blog posts for the first time (hi/friendly wave) and if your back and happy to read more of my ramblings (massive hug!!). 

If you haven’t caught one of these before Fleeting Thought is something I’ve come up with while trying to post more of my feelings and be a little bit more blog-ish, these wordy posts might sometimes include stories or poetry or be a bit random and rambling about various things I think about.

So lets go…

Basically over the last couple of weeks I’ve been releasing my inner housewife and doing some old school things…I‘ve been learning how to bake my own bread! 

Having never baked bread before I’m totally excited about the magic of basically turning a yeasty bowl of water and flour into fluffy white bread it really is alchemy. I also genuinely don’t understand the cliche that bakers are overweight middle aged men, kneading dough by hand for ten minutes is tough on your arms!

My loaves are a little on the small size but I’d rather only make enough for the household without having to waste any.

My mum is really good at bread making (which is why I’ve never bothered to learn before) and she was told by her nan that to make delicious bread one needs an upbeat disposition and a cheerful attitude, you have to be sincerely happy otherwise the bread will know your being insincere and wont rise! (I don’t know if thats true or just some crazy family thing!)

Its funny I’ve always thought that bread making would be super hard to do but it isn’t, it just takes time my small ish loaf takes two or so hours to complete, but it feels so homely and satisfying to make.

For what its worth my happy little loaf recipe is as follows…

IIngredients –

500g strong white bread flour

7g sachet of easy yeast

300ml hand hot water (100ml boiling and 200ml cold water)

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsb salt

2 tbsp of olive oil

Method – 

Add the flour, yeast, sugar and salt to a bowl and mix together.

Make a well in the middle and add all the water and oil at once stirring quickly with a wooden spoon to begin creating the dough.

Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for at least ten minutes until soft and pillowy. (If you don’t like it sticking to your hands rub a little of the oil on them)

Put the dough back into the mixing bowl – (I’ve found that oiling it very slightly stops the dough from sticking to the bowl).

Place somewhere warm for one hour or until it doubles in size.

Remove from the bowl and knead three times. At this point you can add other flavours (I haven’t experimented with that yet) and either shape it into a round or use a tin (my mum got this one from a charity shop years ago) slash the top with a knife and return to the warm place for another thirty minutes or until doubled in size again.

At this point pre-heat the oven to 220ºc.

After thirty or so minutes place your loaf in the oven to bake. Most bread recipes I’ve read say to bake the loaf for half an hour but I’ve found that makes the crusts really tough and I’ve been baking it for between twenty to twenty-five minutes which leaves the edges soft enough to actually eat.

Tap on the bottom of the loaf, if it sounds hollow that its ready if not add to the oven again for a few more minutes.

Leave to cool completely before you try to slice it!

I’ve been quite excited about the results of my recent bread making experiments it makes me feel so grown up! 

Well, that just about concludes this post…I really hope you enjoyed it! Do you bake your own bread? I’d love to know. 

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!