A Simple Bread

Today I made my standard bread by the overnight recipe. This probably means nothing to you, so I think I shall have to do some explaining first; the only problem is where to start.

The most basic breads are a simple combination of flour, salt, liquid (usually water) and a raising agent (usually yeast). Yeasted, or leavened, breads are made in stages. First all the ingredients are mixed together and the mixture is worked by stretching and folding. This strengthens the dough by getting the proteins in the flour to form strings; an easily visible effect when kneading fresh dough. The dough is then left to rise for a period of time, 'knocked back' by a second kneading process and left to rise again after being formed into the desired shape. After this baking fixes the dough and kills the yeast, and the bread is ready to be eaten.

This simple bread mix requires very little kneading and can be used to make almost any shape of loaf or roll required. I like to make mine as a granary dough, but it works equally well with other types of flour (no doubt we will get to that in later posts).

The overnight technique I have developed works by leaving the dough in the refrigerator overnight to slow the initial rising period and then forming the bread into rolls for a quick baking and cooling time. This means I can get up, form the bread into rolls, leave it to rise while I am having a shower, bake it in ten minutes and it is cool and ready for making sandwiches by the time I've finished my breakfast.

In order to save space in this blog (definately needed with posts like this one!) recipes will be available as downloadable .pdfs. This has the added advantage of not getting flour on your computer! So to start us off the basic recipe for rolls (baps to give them their original Scottish name) is here and then there is the slightly adapted overnight method.

I think that will do for this enormous post, I shall be back soon to talk about how this versatile recipe can be adapted to provide delicious bread for almost any occasion, and there will of course be some more advanced breads, cakes and puddings in the future. I hope you will keep popping back and I wish you much happy baking.