Whatever kind of breakfast person you are, I believe there is a bread for you. Whether you are a black coffee and sweet treat person, or you like a cooked breakfast, bacon sandwich, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, or tea and toast, I think that bread for breakfast in its many forms just fits like a perfect partnership.
I love breakfast. And I’m not talking about grabbing a Belvita biscuit and takeaway coffee before you jump on a train, I mean breakfast as a leisurely experience, taking it slow and savouring the morning. And that’s exactly what making your own bread is, a leisurely experience. It’s a craft, it takes time to make and taking your time over a relaxing breakfast is a nice way to celebrate your triumph.
Here you’ll find the recipes for three breads you saw on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch yesterday, take your time with them and have fun. If you’re into Instagram, post out your bakes with #bakewithjack so I can see.
English Muffins
Whether you are filling them with bacon and sausages or just having them toasted with butter and jam to me a perfect toasted English Muffin is all about the craggy, crunchy, slightly charred rocky mountain structure of the crumb. To get this don’t slice your muffin in half with a knife like you normally would, instead work your way around the edge of the muffin inserting the prongs of a fork around the midpoint. Then when you’ve gone all the way round pull the two halves apart, and toast under the grill.
Notes
This recipe will make 12 English Muffins and you’ll need a large flat griddle or heavy frying pan to “bake” them on.
Difficulty: Easy to make, tricky to bake
My Kitchen Temperature: 23°C/73°F
Start to finish: 3-4 hours plus cooling time
Ingredients
320g Room temperature milk
12g Fresh yeast or 7g dry yeast
500g Strong white bread flour
8g Salt
25g Room temperature butter
Coarse semolina for dusting
Method
Making the Dough
In a large mixing bowl weigh your milk and yeast and mix together until the yeast is dissolved.
Next add the flour, salt and butter
Mix everything together with your dough scraper until it comes together into a rough dough and then turn it out onto a clean table. Knead your dough well for 8 minutes without dusting with any flour. Then, shape it into a ball and place it back into the bowl. Sprinkle the top with a little flour, cover with a clean cloth and rest at room temperature for 60-90 minutes.
Dividing and Shaping
Use your dough scraper to turn the dough out onto the table.
Use your fingertips lightly to flatten the dough and cut into twelve equal size pieces with your dough scraper. If you want to get them exactly the same size, you can weight them out at 70g each.
Roll each piece into a tight ball and then dip into a bowl of course semolina, press the dough into the semolina to make sure it’s coated nicely all over.
Final Proof
Line up your twelve semolina coated rolls on a large tray giving them a firm press down to flatten each very slightly into a disc shape to make sure they don’t puff to high. Cover with a proving cloth and rest your dough balls for 1 hour.
20 minutes before your muffins are fully puffed up, preheat your griddle if using on a low heat to make sure it is evenly heated.
Baking
Your muffins are going to take 8 minutes each side on a flat griddle or in a heavy frying pan which is a long time. The trick is to do them on a low heat so that by the time 8 minutes is up your muffins are golden ready for the flip, not black. This is the true learning point of the English muffin.
At this point it’s a nice idea to do a tester muffin although it will take 16 minutes to bake by which time your other muffins might get too puffy. So, if you’re doing a tester (or baking in batches) place the tray with the remaining muffins in the fridge to chill them down and stall their puff.
Here’s what I do here; I have a griddle big enough for all 12 muffins (show off I know!) it goes on my hob over two burners, a small one and a big one, so one side is always hotter that the other. The hot side is too hot, and the cool side is too cool and that’s just life, so I preheat the griddle for 20 minutes on minimum heat then put ALL of my muffins on in one go. Knowing they will take 8 minutes each side, the ones on the hot side will probably burn, so I’ll set a timer for 4 minutes and check. At that point I move the pale looking ones to the hot side and the darker looking ones to the cooler side and set the timer again for 4 minutes.
When the second timer goes of it’s flipping time. With a small cranked pallet knife, I flip them all over and set another 4 minute timer repeating the check ‘n’ shuffle technique exactly like before when the beeper goes off. Then I bake for the fourth and final 4-minute period lifting and peeping to make sure nothing goes black.
This can be tricky so here’s your get out of jail free card: If your griddle or pan is too hot and the heat won’t go lower your muffins will go brown too fast. If you reduced the baking time they will be perfect on the outside and raw dough on the inside and if you baked all the way to the end the inside will be delicious, the outside will be black, and your house is now full of smoke, so here’s what you need to do: If you sense this happening don’t panic. Put your oven on to 180°C Fan/356°F/ Gas Mark 5. Toast up all your muffins so they are perfect on the outside and put them onto a parchment lined tray. Bake them in the oven for 10-12 minutes to make sure they are done on the inside.
Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
Fruit Loaf
This light and fluffy fruit bread is delicious simply toasted with salted butter next to your freshly brewed coffee. Or, if you want to go all out you can turn into a warm French toast and top it with thick natural yoghurt, berries, a drizzle of honey and some crunchy toasted pecans. Now you’re talkin’.
Notes
This recipe will make 2 Loaves. I would always recommend making two because it’s the same amount of work and double the shaping practice and you can always freeze one or give it to a neighbour if you won’t eat it in time.
The tins I use here are 1lb Loaf Tins:
Base 8cm x 13.5cm Top 11cm x 16cm Height 7.5cm
Difficulty: Quite sticky but easy
My Kitchen Temperature: 23°C/73°F
Start to finish: Overnight fruit soak, then 3.5-4.5 hours plus cooling time
Ingredients
For the filling
75g Dried cranberries
75g Sultanas
75g Candied orange peel
For the dough
170g Room temperature milk
1 Medium egg
50g Golden caster sugar
20g Fresh yeast or 10g dry yeast
375g Strong white bread flour
8g Salt
50g Room temperature butter
To finish
1 Egg
Pearl sugar nibs
Method
Ahead of time
Place your cranberries and sultanas in a bowl and add just enough cold water to cover, leave at room temperature overnight to soak and plump up.
Drain your fruit in a colander and spread out in a thin layer on a couple of layers of kitchen paper to dry. Pat gently with more kitchen paper and get them as dry as you can.
Add your chopped candied peel and set aside.
Making the Dough
In a large mixing bowl whisk together your milk, egg and sugar. Add the yeast and whisk again until the yeast is dissolved.
Next add the flour, salt and butter.
Mix everything with your dough scraper until it comes together into a rough dough and then turn it out onto a clean table. Knead your dough well for 8 minutes without dusting with any flour, at first it will be sticky, do your best to stay patient and light fingered with it. Use your dough scraper to help unstick yourself from time to time and clean up a bit.
Adding your fruit
When it’s done dust your surface a little with flour and roll your dough out flat with a rolling pin into a circle around 35-40cm wide. Sprinkle half of your fruit mixture over the dough, evenly, all the way to the edges. Pat down with your palms to stick and loosely roll up your dough into a sausage. Give it a quarter turn, roll it flat a second time and repeat with the rest of your fruit. On the second roll your dough will be tighter so don’t worry about rolling the same flat circle as before, just make it wide and flat as best as you can without fighting it too much.
Roll up your sausage into a ball and place it back into the bowl. Sprinkle the top with a little flour, cover with a clean cloth and rest at room temperature for 90-120 minutes.
Dividing and Pre-shaping
Dust the top of your dough and use your dough scraper to turn it out onto the table. Make sure the dough comes out of the bowl upside down, sticky side up.
Use your fingertips lightly to flatten the dough and cut into two equal size half-moon pieces with your dough scraper. Fold each piece into a ball by pinching an edge with finger and thumb and folding it over the dough almost to the other side. Keep turning and folding the dough, working your way round until you end up with a bouncy ball of dough. All the seams and joins should end up on one side, and the underside should be smooth and tight. Roll it over bringing the smooth side to the top and cup your hands underneath the dough slightly to tighten it up. Dust lightly with flour and rest your two dough balls next to each other on the table under a proving cloth for 15 minutes.
While you are waiting, lightly grease your two loaf tins with oil or butter.
Shaping
Remove the cloth from the top of your dough. The dough balls should have relaxed and spread slightly. One by one, shape up your loaves:
Slide your dough scraper underneath to unstick a dough ball from the table and flip it upside down onto a lightly dusted surface.
Press once again with fingertips and knuckles to push the dough flat into a circle. Slide your fingers, palms up, underneath each side of the dough. Grip the dough and pull to stretch the dough sideways. At an angle fold one side two thirds of the way over the dough and the other side the same so that it ends up overlapping the first fold and you have a kind of capitol A shape. Then roll the dough from the pointy edge towards you into a tight sausage. Squeeze up the seam to stick together.
Drop your loaf into its tin seam side down and repeat for the second loaf.
Get Loaf Tins like mine
Final Proof
Cover up your loaves with your cloth again, and rest for 1 hour.
While the loaves rest and puff up, make some egg wash and preheat your oven to 180°C Fan/356°F/ Gas Mark 5 with a deep tray on the bottom shelf. Fill half a kettle of water ready to go for later if you are baking with steam.
After an hour your loaves should have risen but still be quite firm. Egg wash the tops, make 8 diagonal cuts with a grignette if you like, and sprinkle over some pearl sugar nibs. Leave to rest again for a further 30 minutes.
When your loaves have clearly risen and is slightly delicate to the touch get ready to bake.
Baking
When you are ready to load your bread into the oven, boil the kettle.
Gently place both your loaves on the oven shelf and pour the hot water into the tray beneath (be careful!) and close the oven door.
Bake your loaves for 25 minutes.
When they are done pop them out of the tin and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
Overnight Porridge and Prune Bread
What if you could have freshly baked bread in the morning without waking up at 4am. Well guess what, you totally can but it doesn’t come without practice!
Expect some trial and error here. Just like the Overnight Great White it’s final proof will be unsupervised in the fridge while you are sleeping so in theory you can take your loaf straight from the fridge and into your preheated oven. When trying things like this there is always a chance that your loaf it might prove up too much and collapse by the morning and this all depends on the temperature or your kitchen and the temperature of your fridge.
The best thing to do the first time round is try to time your dough so that you put it in the fridge just before you go to bed, and get up early in the morning to check it’s ok minimising the amount of time it is left on its own. After a bit of practice, keeping a record of each time you do, you might just find you could put it in the fridge at a certain time in the evening and know it will be ok until a certain time in the morning. Be up for some practice here, don’t be afraid to fail, and once you nail it you’ll be living that fresh bread for breakfast dream and getting a lie in too.
Notes
This recipe will make 1 bloomer style loaf.
I stone baked my loaf which means proving it up in a banneton basket and baking on a hot stone, but if you’d like to prove and bake it in a tin to minimise faff and equipment you can.
Difficulty: Easy to make tricky to master
My Kitchen Temperature: 23°C/73°F
Start to finish: 3.5 hours plus overnight final proof and cooling time
Ingredients
165g Room temperature milk
165g Room temperature water
30g Honey
8g Fresh yeast or 4g dry yeast
350g Strong white bread flour
50g Wholemeal flour
100g Rolled porridge oats
8g Salt
200g Whole pitted dried prunes (not tinned ones)
Some extra oats for the topping
Method
Making the Dough
In a large mixing bowl whisk together your milk, water and honey. Add the yeast and whisk again until the yeast is dissolved.
Next add both flours, the oats and salt.
Mix everything with your dough scraper until it comes together into a rough dough and leave it to rest to absorb the liquid for 20-30 minutes. Then turn it out onto a clean table and knead your dough well for 8 minutes without dusting with any flour, at first it will be sticky, do your best to stay patient and light fingered with it. Use your dough scraper to help unstick yourself from time to time and clean up a bit. Then, shape it into a ball and place it back into the bowl. Sprinkle the top with a little flour, cover with a proving cloth and rest at room temperature for 90 minutes.
Pre-shaping
Dust the top of your dough and use your dough scraper to turn it out onto the table. Make sure the dough comes out of the bowl upside down, sicky side up.
Use your fingertips to flatten and degas the dough and fold it into a ball by pinching an edge with finger and thumb and folding it over the dough almost to the other side. Keep turning and folding the dough, working your way round until you end up with a bouncy ball of dough. All the seams and joins should end up on one side, and the underside should be smooth and tight. Roll it over bringing the smooth side to the top and cup your hands underneath the dough slightly to tighten it up. Dust lightly with flour and rest your dough ball on the table under a proving cloth for 15 minutes.
Shaping and adding the prunes
Remove the cloth from the top of your dough. The dough ball should have relaxed and spread slightly.
Slide your dough scraper underneath to unstick a dough ball from the table and flip it upside down onto a lightly dusted surface.
Press with fingertips and knuckles to push the dough flat into a circle. Sprinkle your prunes evenly over the doughs surface and press them in to stick to the dough before shaping up your loaf; Slide your fingers, palms up, underneath each side of the dough. Grip the dough and pull to stretch the dough sideways. At an angle fold one side two thirds of the way over the dough and the other side the same so that it ends up overlapping the first fold and you have a kind of capitol A shape. Then roll the dough from the pointy edge towards you into a tight sausage. Squeeze up the seam to stick together.
Spread some oats on onto a tray and brush the surface of your dough with some water. Roll your loaf in the oats so that they stick and cover all the wet parts.
Final Proof
Place your loaf seam side up into a banneton basket.
Cover up your loaf with your cloth again and put it into the fridge overnight (see notes above)
Baking
The next morning preheat your oven to 200°C Fan/392°F/Gas Mark 7 with a baking stone inside and deep tray on the bottom shelf. Fill half a kettle of water ready to go for later if you are baking with steam.
Take a look at your loaf. Hopefully it will be nice and puffy with an obvious increase in size. If not take the basket from the fridge and leave it on the kitchen side while the oven heats of for a booster.
When you are ready to load your bread into the oven, boil the kettle.
Turn your loaf out of it’s basket onto a wooden peel or flat tray. Make small cuts with a Grignette and slide it onto the hot baking stone. Carefully pour the hot water into the tray beneath (be careful!) and close the oven door.
Bake your loaf for 40 minutes. I bake mine start to finish without checking because I know my oven really well, but if you’re not sure set a timer for 30 minutes and take a look. If it looks like they are taking on too much colour, turn the oven down to 180°C Fan/356°F/ Gas Mark 5 to finish off for the final ten minutes.
Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.