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Wednesday 7 November 2012

Cashew nut and walnut white loaf bread (version 2.0)


This is an improved version of my first bread, so don't judge me by how it looks (again). You won't win any competitions with the look of this, but it actually tastes quite ok and definitely beats normal bread you buy from stores. So, I'd recommend this to beginner bread makers, if I can do it, then you can too!

Ingredients
  • 130g strong white flour
  • 20g salted butter
  • 4g fast action dried yeast
  • Half tsp salt
  • 130ml warm water (I actually measured it on my scale as I don't possess a measuring cylinder at the moment, but by the law of physics 1ml=1g surely)
  • 15g walnut
  • 15g cashew nut
  1. Melt butter in microwave and leave it to cool to room temperature for 20 minutes 
  2. Mix flour, salt and dried yeast together
  3. Add butter and a third of the water and combine it with dry ingredients, then add another 1/3 and then the last bit. I find it hard to add all the water in one go, as it becomes too wet and the water doesn't get absorbed by the dry ingredients as well
  4. Combine until it forms a wet and sticky dough
  5. Then knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes. The dough should become smoother and should no longer stick to your hand very quickly into the kneading process, you will know when it's done by poking it with a finger and the dough should spring back slightly
  6. Sprinkle some olive oil in a large container and put the dough inside and seal with cling film. Let it prove for 2 hours in a warm room and the dough should double in size. If your kitchen or room is cold, then you should leave it to prove for 4-5 hours 
  7. Chop nuts roughly, they don't need to be very finely chopped as you would want the nutty texture
  8. Flatten the dough and sprinkle the chopped nuts on it 
  9. Work the nuts into the dough until it is distributed evenly within it and continue kneading for another 2 minutes
  10. Put the dough back into olive oil sprinkled container and seal with cling film again and prove again. The size of the dough may not double, but it should increase in size. Let it prove for the second time for about 1 hour, or if your room is cold, let it prove for 2
  11. Pre-heat oven to 220 degrees C when you can see the dough increasing in size and proved for at least 50 minutes 
  12. Take the proved dough and put it on a baking tray with a piece of parchment paper and egg wash if desired and bake for 40-50 minutes 
  13. When it's done, the bread should sound hollow inside when you tap the bottom. OR, if you have a meat thermometer, then follow this link and it will tell you something interesting: http://bakingbites.com/2008/02/how-do-you-know-when-bread-is-done-baking/ 
Long story short, the inside of your bread should be about 94 degrees C if it's cooked according to this website, not sure how true this is, but it's worth a try I guess if you have the equipment anyway. 

2 comments:

  1. I think this looks pretty good for a first attempt. Hopefully you've caught the bread making bug now. It's so much cheaper and tastes better to have homemade bread when you have the time to do it :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. thank you for the encouragement! This will keep me going on bread baking.

    ReplyDelete