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White Dome Loaf

It’s baking night, as the children’s holidays are over this week, so they need bread for lunches (I’ve been slack over the long weekend when it comes to bread baking, but then we did eat Hot Cross Buns for three days).

Anyway, tonight I decided to do things a little differently. This proved somewhat more difficult than planned, but the result is a small pleasant, springy loaf with a fine crisp crust.


h2. Ingredients.

* 3.5 cups of plain flour
* 0.25 cup of semolina
* 1 level Tablespoon of salt
* 1 egg
* 40 g of butter, melted
* 1 Tablespoon of brown sugar
* 0.75 cup of warm milk
* 1.5 Tablespoons of active dry yeast
* around half a cup of water

h2. Method.

Note, this is a bit out of the ordinary. You will likely think you’ve mucked it up at some stage, but it all comes out fairly well in the end.

Whisk together the yeast, sugar and warm milk and set aside to froth (about 10 mins).

Now whisk together the egg and butter, and set that aside too.

Sift the flour, salt and semolina into a large mixing bowl, and make a well in the centre.

When the yeast has frothed, pour it into the well in the middle of the flour and add the egg/butter mix too. Mix together with a wooden spoon, gradually mixing in more flour as you go. Eventually it will appear that no more of the flour will mix in. At this stage, tip it all out onto a bench and knead as much flour as you can in. Now add some of the water to the flour on the bench, carefully mixing in and kneading into the dough (which will almost resemble shortcrust pastry at this stage, dry and flaky in parts, but combined smoothly in the middle), knead some more until you’ve picked up all the flour into the dough. The dough is likely to be stiff and dryish, and difficult to work with.
Make a bowl out of the dough and pour in some water. Let it sit for a couple of minutes and then rub the inside of the bowl to soften up the dough and permit more water uptake. Carefully try to close up the dough into a ball, with the water inside, then equally carefully, open it back up again, this should make a couple more furrows on the inside of the bowl allowing more water uptake. Now knead the wet dough (which won’t be particularly sticky) until the dough smoothes out and is no longer wet. If you’ve added enough water, it should now be approaching a springy stage. If it’s still dry, repeat the bowl/knead phase.
Once the dough is springy, place it in a greased bowl, cover and allow to rise (at least one hour) until doubled in bulk.

Preheat your oven to 190C.

Deflate the dough, and knead until springy again. Mould into a loaf shape and press it into a small bread pan.
Loosely cover and allow to proof for at least 30 mins, maybe as long as 45 mins. The proofed loaf should already be doming.

Bake for 35 minutes, and turn out onto a cooling rack when done. You should end up with a lovely domed loaf like this:

!/recipes/images/White_Dome_Loaf.jpg!

posted to Breads and Baking,Recipes @ 11:05 pm

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  • At 4:59 am on 18 April, 2006, The Old Foodie commented:

    Hello.
    I love this bread post. A friend from San Francisco just gave me a sourdough culture that she brought back last trip. It comes as a dry mix in a foil pack, and you can order it from http://www.sourdo.com/original_san_fran.htm
    I’ll let you know how it goes.

  • At 2:13 pm on 18 April, 2006, David commented:

    Ooooh, I’ve been procrastinating about making my own sourdough starter and seeing what the local airborne yeast varieties are like. I’ve had real San Francisco sourdough bread, while having clam chowder in San Francisco 😉 It’s good stuff, probably the only good bread to be readily found in the US. (I’m sure lots of people will undoubtedly correct me about that)
    I’ll look forward to hearing how your imported starter goes 🙂

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Beef Saagwala and Stuffed Naans | home | Semolina Pasta with Fried Rookworst and Onion