How to make a flat loaf plain bread with yeast part 2 – The Accidental Recipe Modified

Thursday 2nd June 2011
Recipe 20110602

Flat Loaf Plain Bread Introduction

When I made the Flat Loaf Plain Bread I had some concerns about how it would bake (see how to make flat loaf plain bread with yeast ). I made some adjustments to the recipe. I had reduced the salt content to 1.5% (to the weight of the flour) instead of 2% and had baked the plain bread at 210C (410F) instead of 185C (365F). This time around it was very much better than the previous version.

The Flat Loaf Plain Bread recipe is as follows

Pictures of the Flat Loaf Plain Bread process

Weighed and mixed the dry ingredients for the sponge. It is worth stirring them here at this stage to ensure that the sugar and yeast are evenly distributed throughout the flour before water is added.

Add the water and fold in the sponge mixture on itself.

Give it a good stir and stab the mix to ensure everything is mixed well and the plenty of gluten is formed. You can observe that the water has come out of the flour (see how to make bread with yeast 3 ). I allowed the sponge mixture to ferment for one hour.

Normally I will mix all the dry ingredients separately and the wet ingredients separately to ensure uniform distribution.

Fold in the additives into the sponge.

Keep folding until the mixture forms the dough and every additive is uniformly distributed throughout the dough.

I had place the dough in a large baking tray to spread it out to make a flat loaf. Notice that I did not grease the tin but used baking paper. If you are nit used to it, using baking paper may be a bit more tedious initially, as when you attempt to spread the dough the whole thing moves around in the tin. That is because the dough stick to the baking paper but the baking paper does not stick to the tin.

After 4 hours of proofing the plain bread did rise quite a bit. I did forget to take the picture before placing the baking tin in the oven so I took a quick shot of it before closing the oven door. You will notice that all the baking I do is done at the second shelf from the bottom so that it would not matter whether you are using a gas oven or an electric oven.

I had sprinkled some sesame seeds on top of the dough before baking so that the baked bread would look a lot more attractive.

The sliced flat loaf plain bread looks good doesn’t it.

I must say I had made another mistake. I took this baking paper from my mom’s cupboard and I do not know whether the baking paper was very old stock or it was tracing paper. The paper stuck to the bread and wouldn’t peel off. I had to slice off the bottom of the bread but it was quite good. So I did learn another lesson today – get fresh know baking paper before baking.

I baked this flat loaf plain bread at 210C (410F) for 45 minutes and it did not burn at the edges.

This article “How to make a flat loaf plain bread with yeast part 2” was researched and written by Peter Achutha