How To Make Bread
There’s a trend these days for doing it yourself. People entertain at home, they watch movies at home and, most of all, they cook at home. Internet searches for funky recipes are increasing as the credit crunch generation gets its collective head around the mysteries of wok and saucepan: people want to know how to make stir-fries and curries and omelettes and all sorts of posh food. More than anything, though, they want to know how to make bread.
Why? Why would you want to know how to make bread when you could be dicing fettuccini, or whatever it is you do with fettuccini; and slicing olives and quartering sun-dried tomatoes? Because bread is suitable for anything, so knowing how to make bread will enable you to add a touch of home-cooked goodness to everything you do. Knowing how to make bread gives you guaranteed tasty nutrition from breakfast to tea – and when you know how to make bread you can always pull out the high-toned stuff for that special meal. A tossed salad, some lightly-poached sea bass and a freshly-steaming Mediterranean loaf? When you know how to make bread you can impress for less.
People are often put off by what they think they know about how to make bread. You saw your mum do it, and it seemed to involve an awful lot of banging about, kneading, getting up to your elbows in flour, putting the dough in some mythical place – not too hot, not too cold – in the house that only she could find; the only place in the house where it would rise…. Thing is, these days you don’t even have to know how to make bread in order to know how to make bread. Gone (unless you want them) are the days of kneading and secreting nasty sticky lumps of dough in airing cupboards. Here instead is the brave new dawn of the bread maker. How to make bread?
Spend twenty quid on a bread machine, whang in a load of ingredients in the order it tells you, shut the lid and go out. By the time you get home you’ll have a perfect loaf waiting for you – and your house will be full of that fresh bread smell. That’s how to make bread in the modern age, and a thousand hurrahs for it too. I realised how to make bread with bread machines a year ago (having previously thought that having what looked like a fight with a huge blob of moist Playdough was how to make bread) and I haven’t stopped since. A regular coarse loaf for the daytime – fresh for sandwiches, the remains of yesterday’s for toast – and swanky stuff like olive and rosemary for the old dinner party. How to make bread, the easy way.
Impress your friends, save money and eat like royalty. Mmmmmboy!
