Japanese supermarket bread makes the UK equivalent seem delicious. Whole meal bread is virtually impossible and the white sandwich loaf is very sweet.
So, it didn’t take me long to purchase a bread machine, but I haven’t used it as much as I should or planned!
Primarily for two reasons:
It was easier to buy the ‘plastic’ bread from the supermarket and my children never ate the crusts of my homemade bread as they were too hard.
But that is about to change!
In my search for homemade soft baps, I discovered this recipe and thought I would give it a try. The baps were delicious, soft crust as advertised, but needed a bit more salt.
The next time I made a loaf of bread using the recipe, a bit more salt, some sugar and the dough setting on my bread machine.
Success!
So I went for the biggie- soft crust setting on my bread machine.
It worked! A delicious, not too sweet or salty loaf with a soft crust.
So here is the recipe:
Ingredients
390mls warm water
5mls/1 tsp salt
10mls/2 tsp brown sugar. (I’ve been using sugar cubes as I needed to use them up. They dissolve pretty quickly in the warm water.)
30mls/ 2 Tbs olive oil
300g white hard/bread flour
300g wholemeal hard/bread flour
5g /1 tsp instant yeast
Method
Place all the ingredients into the bread machine in the order listed.
Choose soft crust setting.
Choose biggest loaf size (usually 1kg or 2lbs)
Hit start!
Enjoy.
Notes:
: I’ve tried adding a bit of Almond flour to my wholemeal flour, but the loaf was very heavy. I’ve not tried adding more yeast to see how it turned out.
: I’ve only made the loaf once on my wholemeal setting. It rose beautifully and came out light and with a soft crust. However the crusts seem to crumble while I was cutting it, so it made it rather tricky.
: To make it in the oven, put the cycle onto dough setting and when it’s complete, remove the dough, punch back and place into a floured bread tin. The dough is very sticky, so you will need flour on your hands and on the surface at this stage. Place the tin in a warm place to rise until double in size(about 40 mins) and then bake at 180 deg C.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with this recipe.
Somedays by C 