home-made bread and it’s dairy free!

Hi everyone!

I just want to share with you my family recipe of  home-made bread. It’s originally my grandmother’s. It’s very simple to make!

If you have a bread machine, you simply add the ingredients and wait for the machine to do the work! If you like myself, don’t have any bread machine, then you’re in for a good arm workout 😉

just kidding.

it’s fun. it’s hands on and the kids can be involved in the process. I think it’s a great weekend (Saturday morning perhaps) indoor activity!

Ama‘s Bread Loaf

makes 2 small loaves and 5 bread rolls OR 2 big loaves

10 g yeast

700 g plain flour (500 g of high protein/bread flour and 200 g plain flour)

1 tbsp of dairy/soy/nut free margarine (I use Nuttelex)

2 cups warm water

110 g sugar

2 tsps salt

for the wash: 150 ml of water and 2 tsps of sugar

for topping: sesame seeds, poppy seeds, any seeds you like

How?

If you have a bread machine, follow its instructions. 

If you do it manually, then here it goes:

1. Mix the yeast, a cup of water and 200 g of flour. Leave it in a warm place. This process helps to activate the yeast. While you set it away, weigh the rest of the ingredients and mix everything in a big mixing bowl.
2. Once the yeast mixture is bubbling and expanding, mix them into the rest of ingredients. Knead them for a good 10-15 minutes, or basically until the dough comes together and soft. How to knead? punch, pull and press the dough. this is where the fun begins!
3. Once you’ve done with the kneading, shape a round dough, place it in a mixing bowl and keep them somewhere warm. I put them inside my oven. Now, we’ll wait until it’s doubled in size, should take around 1-1.5 hrs depending on how warm/cold where you are. In summer time, I found it’s doubled in size in 40-50 minutes. Today, I waited for 1 hr.
4. Once it’s doubled in size, punch the dough! It will shrink the dough and knead them again for 5 minutes. After that, you may divide the dough into 2 even portions for 2 big loaves or I split them into 3 and make 2 smaller loaves and 5 bread rolls. I also mixed in some poppy seeds. By all means, you may use chia seeds, linseed, poppy seeds, any seeds you like! Or keep it plain and simple 🙂
5. After splitting them into even portions, leave them in a bread tin or round tin, whatever you use and we wait again for about 20-30 minutes. This process will finalize the yeast activity before we bake them. At this stage, you may start pre-heating your oven at 160C.
6. Last step is to brush the top of the bread with the wash and sprinkle with sesame seeds (if you like, of course!). Bake them for 25 minutes.
7. Once it’s done, it should sound hollow when you tap the bottom bit. It should be golden in colour and your house will smell like a bakery. Wonderful smell and it will definitely wake up your neighbour ;P  we then brush the top of the bread with dairy/soy/nut free margarine or butter (if you’re not allergic/intolerant to dairy). the margarine will seal its moisture and keep the bread soft and not dry.
8. Bon apetite 🙂

I love this bread, I could eat (a lot of) it by itself! It’s such a comforting feeling, sipping a warm cup of tea while waiting for the bread to bake then enjoy it fresh from the oven. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Enjoy!

*Ama in Indonesian means grandmother- or at least that’s how I called mine