Some days are made for exotic bakes and some are made for comfort baking. Todays baking plan was bread and and I decided that it felt like a comfort day, a day for some good old fashioned white crusty bread. Normally when I bake bread it’s with wholemeal or spelt flours and there’s often some nuts or seeds in there as well. Today is different though and I’m sharing a loaf of sour cream bread for Baking Advent Calendar day 18.
I don’t make white bread that often and to be honest if you looks at most home bread baking books you probably won’t find many recipes for it. White bread tends to get looked down on and I’m sure that we’ve all experience the shop bought, homogenised loaves that have caused this to happen. The fact is though that a well made, crusty white loaf can be as rewarding as any bread. It’s particularly good for sandwich making and this loaf would be perfect for a bacon sandwich on Christmas morning.
This is a quick and easy recipe that requires the minimum amount of dough kneading
Ingredients
- 125g cold sour cream
- 2tsp salt
- 2tsp caster sugar
- 7g fast action dried yeast.
- 550g strong white bread flour
Method
- In a large bowl mix the cream with 150ml cold water and 100ml boiling water, add the salt, sugar and yeast, then mix in the flour until it forms a ball. Cover and leave to sit for 10 minutes.
- Turn the dough onto floured surface and knead for 20 seconds. Return the dough to the bowl and leave for another 10 minutes. Repeat the 20 second kneads twice more with10 minute rests in-between. Than leave the dough to rise for an hour.
- Line the bottom of a 19cm loaf tin.
- Pat out the dough to about 2cm and then roll it in into a scroll.
- Place the dough into the tin, don’t worry if you have to squish it to do this, and leave to rise for another hour.
- Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 and bake the bread for 45 minutes.
David in the kitchen. 