Last week I had an idea. It was a genius of an epiphany.
I’m, skint, I have to save money. One way of doing such a thing is to…
…Bake my own bread.
I am serious, I probably spend upward of two pounds a week on bread, if I make my own I’ll probably spend downwards of one pound ninety nine on bread.
So I went on the internet to find some recopies. Delia was first, she told me I just needed yeast, flour and water. So into Sainsbury’s I went, but the yeast there was hovis yeast with a different technically name to the one Delia specified.
But on the back of the yeast by hovis there was a recipe for bread. This one had butter in.
Now, I’ve eaten hovis bread before, I like it, I’ve ever actually had Delia cook me anything, I’m not going to give her the benefit of the doubt gain, and I plumped to go for the hovis recipe.
I even got me some hovis bread flour, I am such a brand whore.
I nipped to the shop next door to buy a sieve (£1) and a mixing bowl (£1). Brilliant.
Then I go back in and buy a loaf tin (£1.50).
At home I realise a slight problem I have no weighing scales, I’m not so sure that all this is easily guessable. But I guess anyway.
I’m an old fashioned lb and oz boy, but the for the purposes of this recipe I went metric, as it’s easier, namely because I needed 500g of flour and the bag was 1.5kg. Ergo just a third. Best way to do this was in my mind to rip off a bit of newspaper to the length of the bag, then a series of failed folding got me eventually to two folds that left three equal sections, Of I held this up to the bag and marked out in biro a little line to point to one third down the bag. I emptied out the bag into the bowl until i hit the marker… or thereabouts.
Now I needed to sieve it, but the flour was in the bowl. I poured the flour into my new loaf tin, then back into the bowl via the sieve. Easy. Now I had to measure some butter, this time I needed 25g of butter from a 250g packet. Easy, a tenth. Not so easy, was having difficulties in folding a piece of paper to ten equal sections. So I went to get a ruler and sat in my kitchen measuring some butter. Sometimes I worry about myself.
But I got my tenth and thwacked it (technical term, try to keep up) into the flour. I rubbed it in, but there was still way to much un rubby flour. So I thought fuck it, thwacked another load of butter in, this was better.
Now I needed both a teaspoon of sugar and of salt, I knew how to measure a teaspoons worth, easy. But I couldn’t find any clean teaspoons. We have hundreds, eventually I found one and I was ready to rock. Then I stirred in the yeast. The recipe on the back of the packet called for a teaspoon and a half, the yeast comes in 7g sachets, it was after much careful ripping and pouring that I concluded that 7g is a teaspoon and a half. Clever hovis
The final thing was 10fl oz (300ml) of warm water. Now I really was flummoxed. How was I going to measure this, I’m reckoning this quantity is important. So I emptied out my flatmates milk into a glass, remembering that milk bottles have markings on the side, it told me where a litre was from the bottom, a bit more measuring and hey presto I worked out essentially where I reckoned the 300 ml mark would be.
So I added in some (not all) of the water to make a dough, I needed more water, so I added the rest of it. Mistake, now it was swimming a bit, so I chucked in some more flour, eventually I got a dough.
Now I need to knead it to piss of the yeast and make it rise to the bait, and also to get some air in, I kneaded it for ten whole minutes, then plonked it in the (buttered) tin. I left it in the airing cupboard with a tea towel on top next to my drying pants. So unsure if pants will smell of bread, or bread of pants.
BREAD OF PANTS
After an hour I checked it and it had actually fucking risen, I couldn’t believe it. I turned on the oven and twonked (another technical term) it in. After half hour it looked like bread, I got it out of the tin and admired it. I’d made this, this was almost as impressive as the potato growing. I created both the bread and the potato plant. I am their dad, or God, I have the power. THE POWER. (evil laugh)