Basic Bread

There's nothing better than Basic Bread straight from the cooker.

I'd been hankering to bake some bread for a few days, and on Friday night, I decided it was time. Especially since I'd already decided that we were having soup for dinner - and nothing goes better with fresh soup than a loaf of freshly baked bread straight from the oven.

I'd seen Jamie Oliver cook this recipe on his various shows and thought that it was basic and easy and that I'd give it a whirl. He also uses it as a base for all of his other types of bread: foccacia, stuffed bread, baguettes etc, etc.

Probably the best thing about it, is that it only uses 5 ingredients and there is minimal washing up to do. Basically, the dough is prepared on the bench top by making a well out of the flour and filling the well with the rest of the ingredients (water, yeast, salt and sugar). The bread rose perfectly (thanks to the use of my airing cupboard) and handled like a dream.

The bread worked wonderfully and had that real sense of being proper bread. I've made bread before - many times, but there always seemed to be something lacking - this was just right.

The soup I made was a leek, potato, pea and spring green soup - using 3 of the ingredients from our vege box. It was a wonderfully tasting, subtle soup, which, on hindsight could have done with a touch of garlic.

The Basic Bread Recipe