Robert Allan's Bread
Ingredients
500g Matthews Cotswold Flour – Strong White Bread flour
7g dried yeast
7g salt
300g (60% hydration) tepid water
4 Tbsp Cold pressed Rapeseed oil (or basic rapeseed will do)
Method
- Weigh flour into a large bowl.
- Put yeast at one side and work into the flour slightly.
- Put salt at the opposite side.
- Make a well in the centre and add the water and oil to the flour and using one hand like a claw, stir together until the dough comes together as a ball.
- Empty the dough onto the bench and knead, for 10-12 minutes. Dust the worktop with a little flour and sit your dough on the flour. Flatten slightly and bring the outside of the dough, into the centre. Work all the way around the dough doing this, thus creating a little tension on the top of the dough.
- Dust a bowl with a little flour and pop your dough into your bowl. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise (doubles in size). This will take between 1-2 hours, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
- Once risen, thump the dough to knock the air out and tip back onto a lightly floured worktop. Knead a few times and bring together into a ball.
- This basic dough can now be used for 1 loaf or 12 buns.
For loaf
- Shape the loaf as before, bringing the outsides of the dough, into the centre, to create tension across the top. This can be popped into a loaf tin or left freeform on a tray.
For buns
- You could partition your dough into 70g balls of dough (ideal for sandwich rolls)
- Cup your hand over the ball of dough and roll into a tight ball. Place onto a baking tray and continue rolling the dough, placing each ball quite close (2cm) to each other on the tray. This will give nice soft edges, once baked.
Final steps
- 1. Cover either with the tea towel and once again and leave to rise – 45-60 mins.
- 2. After 40 mins pop another separates small tin in your oven and heat your oven to 220C fan.
- 3. Once the loaf the loaf has risen, or buns are proved and almost touching each other, pop the baking tray into the middle of your oven.
- 4. The tin you popped into the oven, put 4 or 5 ice cubes into the tin and close the door, drop oven temp to 200C fan and bake for 35 min for a loaf or 23 minutes for buns.
- 5. Once out of the oven, immediately place onto a cooling rack, to cool down.
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