Country Bread

This isn’t my recipe. Though one of these days I think I’ll have a go at making my own bread. I’ve already had success with bread rolls, so why not?

Kaja made this country loaf for the office Christmas dinner I went to. Once I’d tried it, I thought it would be just the thing for a guest recipe in the book I was putting together. I really wanted to get the finished book out before Christmas, so I needed the recipe and a photo in double-quick time.

As you can see, the photo’s very professional (and the bread really does look like that, honest!). A cut above my quick phone snaps. Brilliant. As for how hard it was to get my hands on the recipe, I won’t go into that. It mostly made it into the book thanks to Kaja’s boss, who took some of her work off her hands just so she’d have time to write it down. Thank you. To both Kaja and her boss, of course 🙂

I did try the bread, though without butter, because someone had hidden it from me (I’m not really sure why). A fine loaf, well worth recommending. And almost handmade, which would count for more if the dreaded words “Kitchen Aid” didn’t crop up in the recipe :p

At a glance:

Preparation time: about 2 hours

Serves: 12 people

How many calories? It’s bread, bread, baked goods. Goes straight to your ar… like nothing else

Ingredients for a delicious, easy country loaf:

• 500 grams of wholemeal wheat flour
• 500 grams of whole-grain wheat flour
• a tablespoon of salt
• a tablespoon of honey
• 2 tablespoons of sourdough starter (I don’t think it’s essential, but I added some because I happened to have a starter growing under the radiator)
• 2 sachets of dried yeast
• 700 ml of lukewarm water

Method (Kaja’s recipe):

Dissolve the yeast and honey in 300 ml of water and set aside for 5 minutes to let the yeast wake up. Put all the flour and the salt in the mixer bowl (I went round to my mum’s because she’s got a Kitchen Aid (sic!), and even after years at the gym, kneading dough by hand leaves my muscles aching). Run the mixer on its lowest speed, with the dough hook fitted, of course, and slowly pour in all the liquid.
Give the dough about 10 minutes in the mixer. If you haven’t got one, heaven help you: it’ll probably need about 15 minutes of wrestling by hand, and the dough is incredibly sticky! By then it should be smooth but fairly loose. Now comes the hardest part. Dust the dough with flour and shape it into a ball. The tricky bit is that the dough is loose and keeps spreading, but that’s how it needs to be or it’ll turn out stodgy when baked…

As I mentioned, this recipe is a taster from the FREE recipe e-book “The Primitive Cookbook with Recipes, Part 1”. If you want the full recipe, download the e-book completely free.