Paulchens FoodBlog?!

Zorra is holding an event for the World Bread Day 2008 which is today, October 16th, so I had to come up and try a new bread.
It was not that easy this time as I’ve been stuck baking my favorite breads like Hokkaido Milk Bread, Pita or the Dark Onion Rye…
I have quite a huge list of breads I WANT to try someday so I had to decide on which – easy question, huh?

Mrs Q. her husband Mr T. and me love the British and Irish Toast breads you can buy there in every supermarket and we tried several times to bake a similar one at home as you cannot buy it here. So far we had not too much success! The Hokkaido bread (with sugar reduced to a minimum) came closest from all tries I made so far.

When I saw the “Soft White Bread” post at The Barefoot Kitchen Witch Blog (another favorite blog of mine) it seemed to me that this bread was worth another try!

I halfed the recipe ’cause for my first try I didn’t want to make to such big breads.

Soft White Bread a little tweaked

So here is what I used:
1/2 cup hot water
1/4 cup milk
1 T chestnut honey
1 tsp salt
1 T dry yeast
approx 3 cups spelt flour
1 T unsalted butter
1 egg

How I did it:
Combine hot water, milk, yeast and sugar give yeast time to bloom, Meanwhile whisk the flour and salt together. Then add the flour&salt mixture and the eggs, evenly mix in the butter. If you feel that the dough needs more flour add some more in until dough is stiff, knead for about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Let the dough double in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
Punch dough down and let rise again until nearly doubled in size. Again punch dough down and shape into a ball, let it rest for a few minutes to allow the gluten to relax. Press dough down into the baking pan. Let the dough rise again until it above the edge of the pan. Bake at about 180°C to 200°C for 30 minutes.

For far more detailed and pictured instructions please visit here.

To my surprise it worked out quite fine:

I haven’t toasted it yet, but on Sunday morning with some butter and honey it tasted wonderful.