I knew I was only going to have a couple of hours to make dinner, so I wanted to try a single-rise bread. Something I could do start-to-finish in about two hours instead of the usual three or four. I went looking for recipes and came across this page of general tips for making bread. Lots of good stuff there, but one thing I halfway disagree with.
Each rise you give bread dough increases the flavor. So let it rise, punch it down, let it rise again, and you’ll have more flavor than in a single rise. When that page says “A good loaf results from a single rise,” that’s technically true. But a much better loaf can come from two or three — or even more — cycles of rising and punching down.
Today, though, I wanted something to make a sandwich on. So I didn’t need a bread with enough flavor on its own. This version still has more flavor than most store-bought breads, but for a bread that I want to eat on its own, I’d still go for the second rise. If you’re in a hurry (relatively speaking) and want something quicker, this works great.
Ingredients
1½ – 2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
cornmeal and olive oil to prevent sticking
Directions
In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 cup of warm water (105° – 115° — warm enough to activate the yeast, not hot enough to kill it) with the yeast, sugar, and one cup of the flour.
Stir together quickly. Yeast gets very sticky, so I mix with a chopstick or the handle of a mixing spoon. This gives less surface for the yeast to stick to.
Let the mixture sit for about 10 minutes, until you see bubbles starting to break the surface. This means the yeast is active and eating the sugar.
If you ever see a recipe that says to “proof the yeast”, that’s what you just did. All it does is “prove” the yeast is still active, and hasn’t expired.
Once the yeast is going, add another half-cup of flour and the salt, and mix on low speed until all the flour is incorporated.
Add the olive oil and mix on low again until the oil is incorporated.
You can’t add the oil in the beginning, because it will coat the flour and keep it from absorbing the water.
Check the consistency at this point. If it is still too runny and doesn’t stick to the beater, add more flour a quarter-cup at a time until the dough pulls away from the sides.
The wetter the dough is the faster it will rise, so go easy on the flour.
Beat on medium for about 8 minutes. You want the dough to completely pull away from the sides of the bowl and stick to the hook.
Put a few tablespoons of oil in a clean bowl to coat the bottom and put the dough in.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a wet tea towel to keep the dough from drying out. Place the bowl in a warm spot to rise. Inside your oven, turned off but with the light on, should be just right.
Leave it to double in size, about a half-hour.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, but try not to deflate it.
Gently stretch the dough out into a long roll.
Cut it in half, so you have two rolls as long as your largest baking sheet.
Dust the baking sheet with cornmeal and place the rolls on it.
Pre-heat the oven to 400°. In the time it took to heat up, my rolls kept rising, gaining back the volume they lost while I was shaping them.
Bake at 400° for 20 minutes, until golden brown and it sounds hollow when you tap on it.
And that’s it.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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10 Comments
What do they look like on the inside? Airy or dense or what?
Doughy! My family loves bread just barely at the point of reaching “done.”
Oh wow, I forgot to include the shot of the inside. Okay, I’ve got another post coming up Thursday that shows what I used this for. If you can hang on another 43 1/2 hours you’ll have your answer.
I use this recipe from a very old copy of the La Leche League cookbook, “Whole Foods for the Whole Family” when I’m in a hurry to add something that will convince my family that the meal is better than it really is! I agree that a single rise is never as good but homemade is better (and less expensive) than store-bought. This one-hour dinner bread gives three smaller sized loaf pans for one effort; at our house this means an afterschool snack, bread with dinner and homemade toast in the AM–nothing to sneeze at!
http://www.astray.com/recipes/?show=One%20hour%20dinner%20bread
I made some of this bread last night. I must have used a little too much flour as it didn’t rise quite as much as yours. I’m new to bread making but I’ll be trying again in a few days when the loafs I have are gone.
Chris, that could also be the flour you used. Did you use all-purpose or bread flour? The other possibility is you used too much flour. The dough was still pretty sticky when I put it in the bowl for the first rise. It’s taken me quite a few loaves to recognize how wet I could get away with.
I used bread flour. I’m sure it’s the too much flour, I said a “little too much”.
I didn’t add more than the 2 cups but I think that was too much. I’m pretty sure the 1 1/2 cups would have done it.
BTW the blog is awesome. I’ve made several things off the blog and they are always awesome. I love to cook and the best part is my wife does all the dishes.
hey may i know how long did you took to make this bread
as in the total time for you to make this bread
Dan, it went into the oven at an hour-and-a-half after I put the water in the bowl. Baking was done about 20 minutes after that.
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