This recipe is ideal to learn how to make your own bread. As you will see in the video, it is easy and fun. I always find rewarding the process of making bread rolls or little baguettes. You just need 4 ingredients and magic happens.
Come and join me making bread. Please share your result with me.
Measure correctly all your ingredients. Use a digital scales for accuracy.
Place the flour in the bowl.
Add the salt.
Mix the salt and the Flour for 20 seconds.
Add the water.
Add the yeast
Mix it all at speed 3 on a kitchen aid for about 10 minutes.
Check if your bread is smooth enough by pullling a bit of the dough and streching it gently. We call that the "window check". As you stretch the dough slowly, you should see a smooth dough and elastic. In this photo we can see really large lines (Gluten strand) making a web. It means my dough needs more work.
Place the dough back in the mixer for another 5 minutes.
Check again, stretch the dough gently and now you can see that my dough is much smoother with no lines. This means my dough is ready.
Shape the dough as a ball.
Place it back in the bowl.
Cover it and keep it on the bench for 1 hour. I will or should double in size.
Shaping your bread.
Grab your scale and place the dough on the bench.
Knock the gas out of the dough by pushing it down.
Divide the dough into 50-55g for dinner rolls. 70-80g for lunch rolls 180g for baguettes.
Shape the dough by hand. you may want to watch the video for it.
Here, we try to tight up the dough by rolling in against the bench.
Shaping requires few bread rolls to be perfect. you need to squeeze the dough as you roll it on itself against the bench.
Like this you are creating little balls. but alternatively you can create little baguettes by elonging your shaped balls. Always place the sim of the baguettes on the tray facing down.
place your rolls on a tray.
do the same for the larger baguettes. Shape it as a ball first and roll out.
then from the center of the ball using your 2 hands, put pressure on the dough and seal the dough to create a sim.
from the middle of the dough roll out the dough to a long strand of bread.
Place it on a tray, sim down.
Brush all your rolls and baguettes with water. Then try to do few cuts on the bread. Either using a knife or scissors.
Epi style, move one cut to the left side and the next to the right side
With chia seeds or rice flour.
Prooving your bread rolls
A lot of student ask me how to do at home. Here is my tip. I place a tall glass in the middle of my tray.
and put the tray in a large bin bag. And place it all on a warm area such as my stove. This prcoess should take 1 hour to 2 hours depending how warm is your room.
Baking your bread
Preheat your oven at 220C.
Unwrap the rolls and baguettes. Remove the bin bag and glass. your bread should have double in volume. Only when it does, yuo should bake it
Place the bread in the oven with a bowl of water. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, depending how crispy you like your bread.
Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool down on a rack.