If there’s a recipe we all need in our recipe book it’s a good white bread recipe. Today you’ll learn how to make a braided white bread mould as well as small rolls or buns. You can make them for your next breakfast or brunch or simply make them to have nice bread at home.
The good thing about this recipe is that you can use it for lots of different things. You can fill it with pesto, cheese, cinnamon sugar, chocolate, etc! It’s delicious and adapts to whatever you want from it :). You can also add herbs or raisins to the dough.
For this recipe you can also use half white flour and half wholewheat and it grows and works as good as all white.
For the bread loaf I made a braided one just because it’s more complicated so I can show you how to do it. If you want to make a regular bread loaf you stretch the dough and roll it onto itself and then put it in the mould.
On top we put different seeds and cereals: poppy seeds, oats, sesame. You can also use flax seeds, black sesame or even nuts like on the bread loaf where we used silvered almonds. The most important thing is that none are toasted unless going into the dough, case in which they need to be toasted.
Basic White Bread
Ingredients
Dough
- 375 g all purpose flour
- 30 g sugar
- 6 g salt
- 11 g instant yeast or 44g of fresh yeast or 22g of fry yeast. See note for method of use.
- 23 g unsalted butter melted and cooled to room temperature
- 225 ml lukewarm water
To paint and garnish the bread
- 1 huevo
- 2 tbsp water
- seeds and nuts to decorate optional
Instructions
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Put everything in a stand mixer bowl and use the hook accessory to knead it for 15-20min or until it passes a window test. You can also knead by hand. To see it it passes a window test you take a small section of dough and stretch it from the sides gently. If you can see the light on the other side without it breaking then you've kneaded enough.
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Put the dough in a clean bowl, cover it with a kitchen cloth and let proof in a warm spot until it doubles its size (40min - 1 hour).
To make the bread loaf
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If you want to make a regular breadloaf then stretch it to the length of the mould using a rolling pin and roll it onto itself, keeping the length of the mould. Then it goes inside a lightly oiled mould to proof.
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To braid divide the dough in 3 portions of equal weight and roll it to double the length of the mould. Braid them, fold the ends underneath it (leaving the prettier section on top) and then into a lightly oiled mould to proof.
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Proof covered by a kitchen towel in a warm spot for another 40min-1 hour or until it doubles in size.
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Paint with the mix of egg and water and decorate with seeds and / or nuts (optional)
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Take to a preheated oven at 180C for 30min or until nicely golden.
For the buns / rolls
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Weight 45g pieces per bun. Make sure the dough is always covered with a kitchen towel while you work with a piece of dough as it tends to dry out.
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Flatten out the dough and fold the outside edges in, forming a sort of parcel. Then turn it around so the place where it joins is underneath the bun.
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Use your hand to roll the bun, adding a bit of pressure down towards the table. The join should always be underneath. For more information watch the video above.
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Let them proof on the countertop covered with a kitchen towel for 20min.
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Now dip the top of the bun into the egg and water mix and then roll them through the seeds or nuts so they're completely covered. Alternatively you can paint them with the egg mix once transferred to the baking tray and sprinkle them with seeds. Also you can just paint them and not add seeds or nuts.
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Take to a preheated oven at 180C for 15-20min or until golden on top and on the bottom.
Recipe Notes
** If you're using dry or fresh yeast you need to first dissolve it in the lukewarm water along with the sugar and let it rest for 10min. If you don't see any foam forming on the water surface that means the yeast is dead and you need to discard it. After this time you can add it with the rest of the ingredients for kneading.
