REPOST: How to make easy white bread

The white bread is one of the basic types of bread that you can do.  Here is an easy step-by-step guide courtesy of BBC Food Recipes.


Ingredients

• 500g/1lb 1oz strong white bread flour, plus a little extra flour for finishing
• 40g/1½oz soft butter
• 12g/2 sachets fast-action dried yeast
• 2 tsp salt
• about 300ml/10¾fl oz tepid water (warm not cold – about body temperature)
• a little olive or sunflower oil

Preparation method

1. Put the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the butter. Add the yeast at one side of the bowl and add the salt at the other, otherwise the salt will kill the yeast. Stir all the ingredients with a spoon to combine.
2. Add half of the water and turn the mixture round with your fingers. Continue to add water a little at a time, combining well, until you’ve picked up all of the flour from the sides of the bowl. You may not need to add all of the water, or you may need to add a little more – you want a dough that is well combined and soft, but not sticky or soggy. Mix with your fingers to make sure all of the ingredients are combined and use the mixture to clean the inside of the bowl. Keep going until the mixture forms a rough dough.
3. Use about a teaspoon of oil to lightly grease a clean work surface (using oil instead of flour will keep the texture of the dough consistent). Turn out your dough onto the greased work surface (make sure you have plenty of space).
4. Fold the far edge of the dough into the middle of the dough, then turn the dough by 45 degrees and repeat. Do this several times until the dough is very lightly coated all over in olive oil.
5. Now use your hands to knead the dough: push the dough out in one direction with the heel of your hand, then fold it back on itself. Turn the dough by 90 degrees and repeat. Kneading in this way stretches the gluten and makes the dough elastic. Do this for about 4 or 5 minutes until the dough is smooth and stretchy. Work quickly so that the mixture doesn’t stick to your hands – if it does get too sticky you can add a little flour to your hands.
6. Clean and lightly oil your mixing bowl and put the dough back into it. Cover with a damp tea towel or lightly oiled cling film and set it aside to prove. This gives the yeast time to work: the dough should double in size. This should take around one hour, but will vary depending on the temperature of your room (don’t put the bowl in a hot place or the yeast will work too quickly).
7. Line a baking tray with baking or silicone paper (not greaseproof).
8. Once the dough has doubled in size scrape it out of the bowl to shape it. The texture should be bouncy and shiny. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knock it back by kneading it firmly to 'knock' out the air. Use your hand to roll the dough up, then turn by 45 degrees and roll it up again. Repeat several times. Gently turn and smooth the dough into a round loaf shape.
9. Place the loaf onto the lined baking tray, cover with a tea towel or lightly oiled cling film and leave to prove until it’s doubled in size. This will take about an hour, but may be quicker or slower depending on how warm your kitchen is.
10. Preheat the oven to 220C (200C fan assisted)/425F/Gas 7. Put an old, empty roasting tin into the bottom of the oven. 
11. After an hour the loaf should have proved (risen again). Sprinkle some flour on top and very gently rub it in. Use a large, sharp knife to make shallow cuts (about 1cm/½in deep) across the top of the loaf to create a diamond pattern. 
12. Put the loaf (on its baking tray) into the middle of the oven. Pour cold water into the empty roasting tray at the bottom of the oven just before you shut the door – this creates steam which helps the loaf develop a crisp and shiny crust.
13. Bake the loaf for about 30 minutes.
14. The loaf is cooked when it’s risen and golden. To check, take it out of the oven and tap it gently underneath – it should sound hollow. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

Bakery Info: When Saturday comes: the rise of the football pie

Ladies and gents, the football pie.  Read this article for more:

When you think of a Saturday afternoon at a football match, the thought of award-winning food does not automatically spring to mind.

AYE TO A PIE: the award-winning Forres Mechanics’ pie

This could perhaps be forgiven, with the average club serving up mass-produced heated pies from their kiosks. However, some clubs have realised the importance of a half-time pastry and are putting a lot of effort into making top-notch snacks.

Food is seen as a key part of a day in the stands, with fans not only consuming pies for warmth and to fill stomachs, but also for enjoyment. For travelling fans, it is sometimes the ‘make or break’ element of the trip, after the result of the match itself.

In fact, with hospitality becoming increasingly crucial to sport fans, the food that is served in stadia has the ability to enhance reputations and, ultimately, affect whether some visiting fans return. For home supporters it acts as the deciding factor in whether to eat at the game or to indulge at a nearby pub.

It’s not just the corporate boxes at Premier League clubs (famously labelled the “prawn sandwich brigade” by Roy Keane) that enjoy top-quality catering at matches. There are grounds in the lower leagues of British football that pride themselves on treating spectators who sit on the cold terraces to good food.

Venture to Morecambe and you can eat award-winning pies made by the club’s own team of chefs. The Lancashire outfit will remember 2010, not only as the year it moved into the newly built £12m Globe Arena, but also for the arrival of Michelin starred head chef Graham Aimson, who changed Saturday afternoons for pie-lovers cheering on the Shrimps.

The club is a regular fixture of League Two in the fourth tier of English football, but when it comes to pies, they are top of the league. They were crowned Supreme Champion at the British Pie Awards in 2011 for their ham and leek pie and the winning streak continued in 2012, when the club won a special award to recognise small producers. It also topped three different classes with the pork, apple and cider pie winning the “other meat” class.

Local ingredients

Aimson says: “When I came to the club, I wanted to serve food made by us and not sell mass-produced pies out of a freezer, not only for events and hospitality but also for the fans in the stands.”

The hard work is non-stop for Aimson and his squad of cooks, tweaking recipes, developing new products and rotating flavours. Sourcing ingredients from local suppliers is also a key focus. “It’s good for the local community and helps to keep work in the area,” he says. “We are in a good location to make use of what is around with plenty of farms and the Lake District herds, and it generally tastes better when you use fresh ingredients in the food.”

One top-end London retailer certainly seems to agree, stocking the club’s steak and ale and chicken, ham and leek pies on its shelves at £9.95 a pop. It means even more profit comes back into the club and the local community, although Aimson is not looking to roll out the products to other big name retailers.

“We sell to small local retail outlets like farm shops. We don’t want the product to become mass-produced, so we stick to the more decadent shops,” he says.

The effort that Morecambe makes with its food is not frequently seen at other grounds, but there are a few other clubs who are following in the Shrimps’ footsteps.

Football category

December 2012 saw the launch of a football category at the World Scotch Pie Championships to acknowledge pies sold in Scottish football. It attracted 48 entrants including all but one club from the Premier League and outfits throughout the Scottish football league, down to the Highland and Junior divisions.

Douglas Scott, chief executive of the Scottish Federation of Meat Traders Association, one of the organisers of the competition, alongside Scottish Bakers, said the companies behind food at football grounds “deserve recognition for their hard work”.

Scott says: “It is one of the biggest market for pies in Scotland and some of them are very good. It’s also a good reason for going to watch the football; to have a little treat at half time.”

There are different awards within this new category, which saw Celtic take the Speciality Award, however the overall top football pie went to Highland League’s Forres Mechanics for their steak pie.

Unlike Morecambe there is no head chef maintaining quality – instead they are supplied by the local family butcher’s shop Murdoch Brothers.

Founded in 1916 and situated on Forres’ high street, brothers Ronnie and Graham Murdoch now run the business and have supplied the club for the past two years.

Graham Murdoch says: “We have seen a healthy increase in sales since winning the award via our internet site, which we use to sell our products nationally.”