Baking bread

Is baking homemade bread difficult? Not really, I've tried it and have been enjoying home made bread so far.. in fact, have even ventured to other types such as focaccia, pizza and ciabatta!

Simple buttery bread
a) 2 cups high protein bread flour
b) 1 teaspoon dry yeast
c) 1 teaspoon salt
d) 1/2 cup milk
e) 1 egg
f) 1 teaspoon bread improver (optional)
g) 2 teaspoon sugar (brown or white is ok)
h) 2 tablespoon butter

Pour 1/4 cup room temperature milk into a small bowl. Pour the yeast and let it rest for 5 minutes before disolving it through stirring. In another bowl, place the sugar, butter and 1/4 cup milk. Warm it till disolved in a microwave (high heat for 10 secs).Cool it at room temperature then pour in the egg. Mix well.


In the big glass bowl, mix the flour and salt. Create a hole in the center and then pour both the yeast mixture and butter/egg/milk mixture into the hole. Using the spoon, slowly stir in the flour till it's all mixed well.

Find a place where you can knead the bread. Either use an island top or kitchen top. Make sure it's clean! and well floured. With both your hands (floured as well), pour out the mixture and knead till it becomes elastic and smooth.

Make the dough into a ball and place back into the glass bowl. Sprinkle some flour on the top and cover with cling wrap. Now you wait for 1-1.5 hours till it doubles in size.

Using a floured hand, punch the dough! (it's ok, don't feel bad since it'll rise again). Remove from the bowl and place on the island top. Shape it to fit your baking container - you could use a typical square aluminium bread container or the non-stick ones you can get at Ikea. Flour the container before placing the dough. Let it rise again till it doubles in size for 30mins to 1 hour.

Get your oven ready at 200 Celcius. Once ready, put the container into the oven and leave it for 20-30 minutes. Here's the best part when you see your hard work becoming a nice masterpiece. The dough will rise and your kitchen will smell lovely with butter bready smell.

Once ready, take out, cool it on rack. You could also slice it all up (once cooled) and put into a plastic container and off it goes into the freezer! keeps for months and taste just as good...