Since the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone seems to be making their own bread ! So here is my personal recipe, designed to usurp the less time possible while working from home :)
Ingredients
- 4 cups of bread flour*
- 3 teaspoons of sugar
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 2 teaspoons of quick rise yeast
- 1 1/2 cups of warm water
Instructions
- Heat up your oven at lowest setting for about 2 minute (just to make it warmer, not hot). Then turn off the oven, and turn on the light inside the oven.
- Combine all the dry ingredients. Add the warm water and mix everything with a wooden spoon until a ball starts forming.
- On a floured surface, knead the dough until it become a bit elastic without being too sticky (about 7 minutes). Basically, until you feel like the dough is nicely uniform and it's consistency won't evolve any further.
- Distribute the dough equally inside a lightly oiled loaf pan and place the pan at the bottom-center of the oven. To prevent the dough from drying, you may place a recipient containing steaming hot water in the oven or a wet warm cloth on top of the pan. Let the bread rise for about 1h20.
- Remove the water recipient (or the wet cloth) from the oven. Set the oven to 350 °F and let it bake for 50 minutes (no pre-eating required).
- Let it cool for at least 20 minutes (so it's easier to slice). I like to roll the bread on it's side in the pan while cooling, this way the crust wont get softened by the steam coming out of the bread.
* Bread flour basically contain more gluten than all-purpose flour. This accelerates the raising process and will hold your bread together more (so you can make thiner slices without it breaking). All-purpose flour will also work, but you might have to wait longer during the raising process and the result may not be as perfect as it would with bread flour.
