Everyone loves bread. Bread has been around since we invented butter, and long before that too.
Now, bread is not particularly pricey as an item. I understand this. It’s easier to go buy some pre-sliced softish thing from Lidl and be done with it. But the most wholesome (and wholemeal) way to waste your time at Uni is to make your own, under the premise that it’s actually about half the price of a normal loaf . This is procrastibaking at its finest.
I like making bread as it means I can add as much crap as I like into the dough and it becomes posh-bread, without me having to pay £2.80 for some cranberries mixed in. I like doing honey-nut bread which makes a nice addition to my soups, which I’ve been making rather a lot of. Also, you know how toast plastered liberally with butter is the best thing ever? This bread, toasted to a deep golden brown, slathered with butter (and possibly a scraping of jam or marmite) is one of the nicest, simplest things in the world and makes me very happy. Shame I haven’t got any photos, cos it really is delicious.
So, if you do make it (and blimey, I’ll be impressed, surprised and pleased if someone actually does) enjoy it with everything, and don’t forget to freeze what you don’t eat within 2 days of making. This doesn’t have preservatives in it so it goes stale if left out for too long – the best way to combat this is to freeze it and defrost when you need it by putting it in the oven for about 20 minutes. This is another recipe in stages, which I’ve found is just the perfect excuse to get up from your desk for a bit.
Basic brown bread recipe
500g of wholemeal flour (33.5p)
330 ml of quite warm water – about the temperature of a drinkable cup of tea -FREE
7g sachet of yeassst
Teaspoon of sugar – 2p
2 heaped teaspoons of salt – 2p
Tablespoon of oil or melted butter – 5p
Optional extras
Cranberries/ chopped apricots
Nuts
Olives
Seeds
What u do
Mix the hot water with the yeast and sugar and leave that to mengsel for a wee bit while you sieve the flour into a big old bowl – if you are using wholemeal, remember to add the bran that’s collected at the bottom of the sieve. Fibre and all that.
When your yeast mix is all frothy and spoogly, add it to the flour, with the oil and stir it loads until it comes together as a ball of dough. Add the salt and tip it out onto a work surface, kneading it vigorously. This is excellent exercise and means you don’t have to go to the gym any more bc ur getting BREAD GAINZ. Knead it until it’s proper smooth and then toss it back into the mixing bowl and cover it with clingfilm for approximately 400 years, or overnight, or if you actually want bread for dinner, a good couple of hours.
You should come back to an enormous yeasty creature in your bowl. Punch it to get the air out then knead it again for about 5 minutes until its super soft and yummy. At this point, I tend to add about 100g of chopped nuts, perhaps come cranberries, and a squeeze of honey. Put this in a loaf tin what has bin greased up like a big weasel in an exhaust pipe and leave it for another 20 or so minutes to rise in the tin. On top of the fridge always seems to be the warmest spot that’s out of the way. Anywhere where a cat would sit tbh. Put your oven on to 220 degrees.
When you actually want to bake ur loaf, put it int’ oven for a good 40-50 minutes, with a little tray of water to create steam and get you a noice crust. If it’s going brown to quickly, cover it with foil and continue baking. It should be done when it sounds hollow on the bottom and is crispy af all over. Your flat should now smell as heavenly as the inside of god’s sandal; if not nicer.
So, bread. There we go. Keep it in either a tuppaware, or a tightly tied freezer bag to stop it from going off too quickly – freeze what you know you won’t eat within 2 days. This is amazing toasted – just make sure to whack your toaster up to mordor to get it done properly; this is real bread after all.
Student Cuisine for the Gloomy Teen 
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