Breadmaking

As I'm writing this I'm smelling the delicious smell of a fresh loaf just out of the oven. We make all our own bread now and as well as saving money it helps Mr Shoestring and Master Shoestring to know that the loaf is salt-free and soya-free which is not something you can say about shop-bought bread.

We use a Panasonic bread maker which is 7 years old now and always use the same recipe:-

Breadmaker loaf

275g white bread flour

275g wholemeal flour

25g oil

300ml rice milk (I add this for calcium for Master Shoestring but water would be fine)

50ml warm water+2tsps sugar+1tsp dried yeast

Start by adding the sugar and yeast to the warm water and wait for it to froth up. Then add all the other ingredients to the bread maker bowl and start the machine. It will bake nicely on the Wholemeal setting but I don't bother with that. I just use the 45 minute pizza setting for mixing and kneading and then turn the dough out into a greased loaf pan to rise. I put the dough to rise in the airing cupboard but anywhere warm will do. Then it's baked at 200C for 40 minutes. Perfect every time !

Costs are kept down by buying the rice milk and oil on special offer, I usually stock up when rice milk is a pound a litre and look for special offers on the oil so that is down to 3 pounds for 5 litres or lower.

White bread flour is cheapest at Aldi and for the wholemeal it seems to be fine to use cheap chapatti flour at around 5kg for 3 pounds, which is even cheaper than wholemeal flour in Aldi. However, I have sometimes got the price lower by buying a sack of wheat and grinding it using a manual grinder which sits on our kitchen worktop.

No breadmaker, no problem, this recipe works fine in a bowl as well !

My challenge to you today :- Have you ever made a loaf of bread ?