Happiness is Homemade

There has been lots of things I have been making from scratch recently, trying to get away from the convenience of buying everything ready made. I really don’t like going to the shops at this time, so the more I make from scratch, the more I can make our food stretch further.

I don’t know about you, but we eat quite a lot of bread. Being in the house all the time, toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and what ever snacks the kids eat, we get through so much. They go through even more homemade bread, because it is so damn delicious!!

I already posted the recipe for the bread that I make in Cooking up a Storm that was originally for the bread machine. But I changed it to make it by hand.

Ingredients:

250 ml warm water
4 tsp honey
2 tsp active dry yeast
400g of strong bread flour plus extra for adding in if dough is to sticky
4 tsp Olive Oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 Egg Beaten

Pour the warm water into the mixing bowl, add the honey and stir in to the water until dissolved. Add in the yeast and leave for 10 minutes while the yeast foams.

2. Add in the flour, olive oil and salt, and combine together to make the dough. If the dough is to sticky add a bit more flour a little bit at a time until it is nice and elastic, and does not stick to your fingers.

3. Sprinkle the counter with flour and knead the dough for 10 minutes. If you have never kneaded dough before, here is a YouTube video (not my own) that is a good one to follow:

4. Once you have kneaded the dough, place in an oiled bowl, and loosely cover with oiled clingfilm. Put in a warm place to rise for 1-1.5 hours.

5. Once the dough has doubled in bulk, knock it back. If you don’t know how to knock back bread watch this few second video:

6. Once knocked back, grease the pan you are cooking the bread in, shape the dough and put it in the greased pan. Cover again with oiled cling film and let it rise once more for around 1- 1.5 hours.

7. Once its risen, using a pastry brush gently coat the dough with the egg.

8. Bake in the oven on 200 for around 15 minutes for fan assisted oven. But keep a check on it as all ovens vary, so take it out when its golden brown. Let it cool on a rack if you have one.

After making the bread, I made some garlic butter. Using my mini blender, I added butter, garlic, and Italian herbs and blended together, and spread a thick layer on the homemade bread and toasted in the oven. It was delicious and very simple.

I also used the Garlic butter to cook hasselback potatoes and steaks.

Don’t peel the potato and cut slits into them. After that to hurry up the cooking process I part cooked them in the microwave for about 4 minutes, but if you have time you don’t need to do that. I then coated them in the melted garlic butter and baked them in the oven.