Half Baked with Mel Pane Veloce Last year I wrote the cafe reviews, this year I ran out of places to review (read: I couldn’t afford to go to a new cafe every week anymore) so I volunteered to write this food column thing. Some weeks you’ll strike it lucky and get one of my scintillating reviews, some weeks I’ll tell you how to make something wonderful, like this week’s delicious bread recipe. Don’t get your hopes up though, some weeks it will just be me rambling about whatever the hell I feel like writing about, generally food and/or beverage related. Enjoy! Somewhere in the depths of the Christmas/new years/”summer” holidays I was cooking a roast (I think it was sheep, I don’t know, I just graciously accepted the giant hunk of free meat from the in- laws’ farm) and half way through the cooking process, you know - about an hour out from dinner time - I had the thought that no roast meal with lashings of gravy is complete without some soft delicious buttery bread to soak it all up. My previous experience in making bread told me this was going to take at least three hours - which I didn’t have. So I did what any normal person would do, I took to the internet in search of the fastest/easiest way to make bread, preferably of the no-knead variety. I found something called ‘quick crusty bread’ on a delightful Kiwi food blog called Sunday Hotpants. What followed (in around an hour and a half) was the most ridiculously easy, delicious and incredibly fast bread I have ever made, and it has a fancy name to boot. It is also something I believe most poor Uni students could manage –since it has a whole four ingredients, five if you count warm water-so I thought I should share it with you all right away. I have bastardised the recipe a little from that found on Sunday Hotpants, in the interests of ease and simplicity. You will end up with three loaves, flat and puffy, and you will want to eat all of them in one sitting although each loaf is good for one - two people. I use the remaining loaf to make sandwiches to take to work/school the next day. Awesome.
Ingredients 500 grams flour (about 3 ½ cups) 370 mls lukewarm water (if you are lacking in measuring cups this is around 1 ½ cups) 1 teaspoon-1 tablespoon of honey depending on how sweet you like it, I go for the tablespoon (bonus: a single-serve honey pottle is about the right size if you steal some from somewhere) 1 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast 1 teaspoon salt (feel free to chuck in some pepper or herbs at this point to up your fancy-factor) Dissolve the honey in the lukewarm water, put all the other ingredients in a bowl and then add the water-honey mixture, mix briefly with a knife or whatever is handy until just combined. If it is a little dry add some more water, it should be soft and sticky. Sprinkle a little flour on top, cover the bowl and leave it somewhere warm for an hour (it can be as little as 40 minutes if you’re in a rush). Preheat the oven to 220C. Get a baking tray ready with baking paper and a little flour on it; dump the bread mixture onto the tray, split in three and shape into three small loaves (try to handle it as little as possible at this point) Here comes the most complicated part of the recipe: put an oven-safe dish of warm water on the bottom rack of the oven. Bake the loaves for 15-20 minutes and then turn the oven down to 160 and bake for another 15 minutes. At this point the recipe says to leave it to cool for another 15 minutes but that pretty much never happens in my house. I usually descend upon it immediately, start tearing bits off and smearing them with butter, while trying not to burn my fingers. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Happy baking! Next week I’ll tell you all about why you should never volunteer to make fancy-overly elaborate cakes for friend’s birthdays, and how fancy cakes can give you panic attacks. Have a fantastic first week of Uni y’all, and try not to drink too much this week, heh.
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