Wholemeal Loaf

I love freshly made bread – the smell, the taste, the texture and the feeling of satisfaction and virtuous delight I get when I manage to bake a half decent loaf! And, in strictly rationed proportions, I can still eat my bread on Slimming World. According to the Food Optimising rules, 57g of any wholemeal bread can be your Healthy Extra ‘b’ choice for the day. Or, if you want to use this on top of your Healthy Extra, 28g will be 3 Syns.

I normally put my faith in Delia when baking bread but when I consulted my well thumbed copy of ‘How to Cook’ for a wholemeal bread recipe, I have to admit I was slight disappointed. I’m sure the recipe works perfectly like most of Delia’s do but I am one of these insane people who actually enjoys kneading bread and in Delia’s recipe there’s no kneading. For me kneading is an essential part of the process and I can’t seem to reconcile the idea in my mind of an unkneaded loaf. I may be missing the point – maybe there is some complicated science behind not kneading certain loaves – but if I want to pummel away at my dough or slam it on the worktop to work the yeast whilst imagining it’s the head of the person annoying me on that particular day then I damn well will do! Rant over!

Anyway, so I started working on a variation and here’s what I came up with. This makes a 2lb wholemeal loaf.

Ingredients

• 500g very strong wholemeal bread flour

• 70g strong white bread flour

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 1 teaspoon soft light brown sugar

• 1 sachet fast action dried yeast

• About 400 ml warm water

• 2lb loaf tin (I used a silicone one but a metal one is fine)

1. Preheat the oven to the lowest setting you can (I did mine to 50˚C). Weight out the flours (wholemeal and white together) into an ovenproof bowl and then, when the oven is to temp, warm the flour gently for about 10 minutes.

2. Take the flour out of the oven and tip into a large mixing bowl. Place the sugar, salt and yeast in the bowl. NB Never put the salt and yeast one on top of the other. Salt kills yeast so you should add the salt at one side of the bowl and the yeast at the other. If you imagine the bowl as a clock face, I put the salt at 9, the sugar at 12 and the yeast at 3.

3. Using a wooden fork or spoon, mix all the ingredients together gently and then make a well in the centre. Gradually add the warm water a bit at a time, stirring the dough to bring it together in between each bit of water you add. You might not need all the water as all flours are different. If you get to the end of the water and the dough still isn’t quite coming together, add a few drops of water to your hands and then bring the dough together with your hands in the bowl. It’s really important not to add too much water or the dough will be too sticky to knead.

4. Bring the dough together in the bowl with your hands and, once it comes together nicely tip out onto a lightly floured surface.

5. Now comes the kneading. I knead by placing my hands in the centre of the dough, then I use the heel of one hand to push the dough up and out away from me whilst using the clenched fist of my other hand to pull the dough down and out towards me. Then I lift the edges back to the middle, give the dough a quarter turn and repeat. I knead the dough for a good 8 to 10 minutes.

6. Once the dough is kneaded, add the tiniest drop of oil to your mixing bowl (to stop the dough sticking) and place the bread back into the bowl. Cover the bowl with cling film and then leave at room temperature for about an hour.

7. At the end of this time the dough should have doubled in size (or almost!). Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and then give it a good few punches to knock out the air.

8. Stretch the dough out into a rectangle. Fold one edge and then the other into the middle to create a loaf shape and put the loaf into your loaf tin. Cover with a tea towel and leave in the kitchen to prove for 30 to 40 minutes.

9. Whilst the dough is proving, preheat the oven to 200˚C. Once the dough has proved, place the tin in the oven and bake for 40 minutes. Then, remove the loaf from the tin and place it back in the oven upside down directly on the oven shelf for a further 2 minutes to enable the crust underneath to crisp up.

Remove the loaf from the oven and allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing!

This bread is really good with some homemade soup or, for a special comforting breakfast toast a 57g slice and top with butter (2 Syns per teaspoon and 5.5 Syns per tablespoon) and jam (0.5 Syns per teaspoon and 2 Syns per tablespoon). Enjoy!