A sandwich for lunch. My bread tasted as good as it smelled

As far as my game goes, I’ve got the basic framework down and now it’s just a matter of filling it out. It’s a puzzle game of sorts, which is hardly my strong suit, but we’ll see how it goes.

Before I get back to it though, I’ll stick my bread recipe below the cut:

This is kind of a combination of different recipes I’ve tried, and my own experience. I’m not exactly an expert, but this is what works for me. Amounts are metric; none of that confusing ‘cups’ business you get with American recipes.

Ingredients

• 450g strong bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 sachet yeast
• 1 tbsp salt
• a healthy pinch thyme
• a healthy pinch rosemary
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• ~450ml lukewarm water

Instructions

1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
2. Make a well in the centre, add the olive oil.
3. Start adding the water, folding in the dry ingredients. You want to keep adding water until you get quite a wet, sticky dough, and then use the extra flour to make it more manageable. Starting from a wet dough seems to result in a lighter, fluffier loaf.
4. Knead the dough for 5-10 mins.
5. Leaving the dough in the bowl, cover and leave to rise somewhere warm (I usually sit it on top of a radiator) for 1 hour.
6. After an hour the dough should have risen quite a bit. Flour a work surface and place the dough on it.
7. Now stretch the dough out to a rectangle the same length as your loaf tin (these amounts assume a 2lb tin) and 3 times as wide.
8. Fold the dough twice lengthwise, so that it’s roughly the same dimensions as your tin, and then place it in your tin.
9. Cover the tin somehow (I’d recommend a large bowl or something; cling-film will stick to the dough and give you more hassle than it’s worth), and leave somewhere warm for 30 mins.
10. 30 mins later, pre-heat your oven to 230C, leave for another 10 mins.
11. 10 mins later, put your loaf in the oven (once again, it should have risen quite a bit).
12. Bake for 20-30 mins.
13. Remove from oven, remove from tin, leave to cool on a wire rack or something similar.

Enjoy!