Baking. There’s a love-hate relationship between me and baking, however it was all made a little easier when this little beauty below came into my life almost one year ago.

Yaaaas – my better half bought me this beautiful KitchenAid for my birthday last year.

I cannot recommend one of these highly enough, however I really want to stress that you do not need a KitchenAid or any brand of electric mixer to bake. Go freehand like my Nan always used to. It’s always especially fun (and messy) that way if you have little kiddies!

Anyway, my love for my KitchenAid is HUGE. I couldn’t live without it now, and I’ll show you some bakes and recipes in the future, but I wanted to show you have easy it is to make bread without a bread maker!

This recipe from Paul Hollywood is what I used and the ingredients are:

• 500g strong white bread flour
• 10g salt
• 10g instant yeast
• 30g unsalted butter, softened
• 320ml cool water

I think the recipe looks a little daunting, but here’s my take:

1. Put your flour in a mixing bowl. Put the salt on one side, yeast on the other, butter in between.
2. Add water slowly and get your fingers in there (or use your electric mixer if you have a dough hook)! Round and round until all the water has picked up all the ingredients and there’s no flour left in the bowl.
3. Knead, knead, KNEAD until it’s silky smooth. Or just turn your mixer on and whack it round your mixing bowl for 5 mins. There is no right or wrong way of kneading. Just whack it around for a bit.
4. Make the dough into a flat round shape and put it in a lightly oiled bowl somewhere warm with a tea-towel placed over the top. I don’t leave it for a specific amount of time. Just enough time for it to rise slightly so we’ll say maybe 1.5 hours?
5. Whack it, whack it and beat it. Get all that air out, stretch it a little and then make sure it’s silky smooth again. This time we’re going to place it in a loaf tin and pat it down at the edges. Then cover it in a food bag, but make sure there’s plenty of room for the dough to rise. OH and pre-heat a fan-oven to 230°C with a tray in the bottom.
   

   Dough in loaf tin brewing in front of our log burner!

6. Once it has doubled in size or is over flowing, take it out the bag and pop it into the oven on the middle shelf. Add water to your pre-heated tray in the bottom to create steam and leave it DO NOT TOUCH for 30 minutes
7. …and VOILÁ – BREAD!
   

   Take it straight out of the tin after 30 minutes in the oven. Fresh bread… Mmm…

   Let me know if you make any! Remember, you do not need a mixer or bread maker. This can be made easily using your own fair hands. Do not forget to add the water into the pre-heated tray else you’ll end up with 90% crust, 10% bread!

Sx