The secret to a great home made loaf
- Judith Du Plessis
- Oct 25, 2020
- 3 min read
Go on the Ma Baker course and watch as many Bake with Jack video's you can!
Nick (my husband) went on a 2 day course with Ma Baker in West London and learnt how to cook amazing bread and how to set up a bakery business from home. Those 2 days transformed Nicks bread baking, and in turn he transformed mine. Nick kept learning when he came home and found "Bake with Jack" on Youtube, Jack has shared so many brilliant free bread tutorials on Youtube they're really worth watching.
With bread making I knew that I was doing something wrong, but I just didn't know what. I think that's called being "consciously incompetent", it's genuinely a stage in the learning process, it's one step on from "unconsciously incompetent" but not quite at the "consciously competent stage". This is the great thing about having a teacher, Nick moved me on to the next stage by giving me clear step by step instructions and when the loaf didn't quite work he could explain why - my kneading technique was terrible (he actually looked destressed when he saw me pounding the life out of the dough, I thought you were supposed to take all your aggression out on it!), sometimes I'd over proved it, or I hadn't knocked it back enough.
Key to improving my breadmaking was getting a good kneading technique. This is the kneading technique that Nick taught me after he learnt it from watching Jack. Here is Jack.
Nick's wholemeal loaf
500g wholemeal bread flour
7g dried yeast
10g salt
350g water
Trex (or your oil of choice) to grease the loaf tin
Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix together into a "shaggy mess" that's a baking term, don't ask me where it came from, it basically means just bring all the ingredients together. A plastic bread scraper is great for bringing the dough together and scraping it up of the bench whilst you're kneading. The mix might feel a little dry at this stage, but keep the faith and don't add any additional water.
Put the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 minutes, you want to push across the dough, stretching it out rather than pounding down on it. At the end of 8 minutes you should have a smooth ball. Put this back in the bowl, cover with a tea-towel and leave for at least one hour until it has doubled in size. It might take a little longer on a cold day. You'll see from the photo's of the loaf I made I should have left it a little longer for the initial rise as it hadn't risen quite as much as it did during an hour in the Summer.
Put the dough back on the bench and "knock the air out of it" with your finger tips. Now shape it into a ball, the technique Nick taught me below creates surface tension on the dough which helps the bread keep its shape whilst it's baking.
Leave the ball of dough on the board and cover it with a t-towel for 20 minutes.
Take the tea-towel off and knock the dough back again, now it's time for the final shape - make "Mickey mouse ears" and fold it into a baton shape dragging it to get the tension across the top.
Put your dough into a 2lb loaf tin which you've greased with Trex or a small amount of oil. Cover with a tea-towel and leave for an hour to rise. It was cold today so I left it for 90 mins. 30 minutes before it has finished rising put an old baking tray in the bottom of the oven (You'll put some hot water in here for steam when we bake) and turn your oven onto max heat, ours goes to 240 C and takes half an hour to get really hot.
It's baking time! Boil the kettle, open the oven door and pour a little hot water into the pan on the floor of the oven and put your loaf onto the middle shelf. The steam from the water helps keep the crust of the bread soft for the first 5-10 minutes which allows the loaf to fully expand during cooking. Cook it for 12 minutes on this high temp then turn down to 220C for 12 minutes. Now take it out and carefully tip the bread out and knock the bottom of the loaf, it should sound hollow. Put on a wire rack to cool. We have a fan oven and I've never had to bake the loaf longer than the 24 minutes.
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