Recipe 2: White Cob Loaf

This time - Recipe 2: White Cob Loaf

Well, it's pretty much exactly the same recipe as the white bread loaf but this recipe a little more ingredient as it's slightly larger bread. 

So again, not letting the yeast & salt near each in the bowl of flour then adding the soft unsalted butter and the water as needed - it means it's time for the fun part of scrunching it altogether with my hands until all the flour in the bowl is in the dough!

Then it is time to knead, I feel this is my downfall, I  think I'm too much of a weakling to knead it properly, how bad is that? Or I think it's done and it's not. I googled about when to be sure the dough is kneaded enough and I found something called the 'Windowpane test' which is where you take off a piece of the dough (around the size of a golf ball) and you stretch it with your fingers and if it breaks, then it is not kneaded enough but if it stretches fine and you can see the light through it, then it's done! I'm definitely giving this a try for the next recipe. 

The difference in size, from start to finish.

Once kneaded (correctly!) it is then time again to leave it to prove, I like this part, keep going into the kitchen and having a sneaky peak to see how it's doing! Once it's doubled in size, it feels totally different to the dough that you put in the bowl! It's so light and fluffy, it feels like it weighs nothing! Then it's kinda mean as it feels so nice and you have to take it out and punch all of the air out of it, I feel like a right bully! haha...

This bread doesn't go on a tin, it goes on a flat baking tray, I have a really good one from Lakeland's, I'll post a picture of it sometime. In the book it has all different ways to shape bread and gives you diagrams, so really helpful. Anyway, so once on the baking tray, cover and leave it to rise. I have to say this one rose a lot better than the first recipe, I was pretty pleased!

Before you put it in the oven, your meant to slice it deeply but I think I may have sliced it a bit too deep as you can see from the pictures! But in the oven it did rise a lot better than the previous loaf!

There is another trick to making the outside of the bread nice and silk looking but again you're have to read the book to learn that one! ;)

So, I think I baked this one for around 40 minutes, there was a bit more pressure to get it out of the oven due to my dad needing it to cook dinner but he let me have an extra 5 minutes and his dinner still came out yummy! haha

Review from the family: Nice, lighter than my previous loaf (those new muscles are getting stronger) and we dipped the bread into our casserole, yum! Can't beat a bit of bread dunking in gravy!