How To Boost Your Bread Recipe And Make A More Lovable Loaf

Do you like variety? You have your tried-and-tested bread recipe, but you'd like a change?

With some simple tweaks, it's possible to make a different loaf every time, even using the same recipe.

Here are some easy ways to boost your bread recipe and enhance your baking repertoire.

Surprisingly, you can make a lot of different breads using the same basic recipe.

Start here, for example, with The Formula For Great Dough. 

Using that formula, you can take any quantity of flour and understand how much yeast, salt and water to add to turn it into excellent bread.

And that's it. Once you know the formula, the possibilities are endless.

Change Your Flour

One way to bring some extra excitement to your bread-life is to change flours.

Recently, I tried Allinson's Country Grain Flour and really enjoyed it. Writing about that prompted Tony to recommend Matthews Cotswold Flour. Naturally, I felt it was my duty to give it a try and report back. The things I do for you, eh?!

These are the three types of flour that I chose. Incidentally, Matthews only send out bags of flour in multiples of five, to fill their delivery boxes. I bought two each of the Cotswold Crunch and the Eight Grain plus one of the Stoneground Wholemeal.

This week, I have been test driving the Cotswold Crunch.

It's a blend of wheat flour with malted wheat flakes, malted barley and dark rye.

Here's how the dough looked after the initial knead:

And here it is, later, at the proving stage:

You can see that it has quite a lot of texture to it. Presumably those are the malted wheat flakes.

I was pleased with the final result:

As with the Allinson's Country Grain, it seems to have a tendency to become dark (almost burnt!) very rapidly in the oven. Presumably this is due to the maltiness (sugar content). This has both malted wheat and malted barley, so be careful not to over cook it or the crust will become bitter.

The flavour of the bread was very similar to that of the Allinson's Country Grain. I enjoyed it very much. It made a lovely change from my usual loaf.

Add Extra Ingredients

Normally, I buy flour with economy and/or convenience in mind. 25kg sacks of simple wholemeal or white flour from Shipton Mill serve me well for all my day to day baking needs. Buying blended flours and those with added seeds and malted flakes tends to be a more expensive option. I wouldn't normally do that, except for the fact that I was interested in following up the recommendations that I had received.

So, one easy way to change up your loaf-making ways, for adding variety to your bread, is to buy different flours. Another way of achieving the same results would be to stick with your usual, economic/convenient flour source and buy different ingredients to add into the mix. You could buy seeds and malted grains etc in bulk and combine them with your 'basic' flour to create your own innovative blends.

Since I've been enjoying the maltiness of the Allinson's Country Grain and the Cotswold Crunch so much, I'm going to get myself some malted wheat flakes* and sprinkle them into my bread mixture, on occasion, to make a change from my plain, ordinary everyday loaf.
*Affiliate link, in case you want to know where to buy malted wheat flakes.

Pay Attention To Proportions

Bearing in mind that the amount of flour in your recipe is considered to be '100%', and the amount of other ingredients is calculated as proportional to that, a good proportion of seeds (or other added ingredients) to use is 15-20%. So, for a dough made with 500g of flour, you could add 75-100g of 'other' ingredients, be that seeds, dried fruit, spices, nuts or...? Your imagination is the limit here!

Just be aware that adding ingredients and changing flours can alter the requirement for water, in your dough. Wholemeal flour tends to be more 'thirsty' than white flour, for example. Rye flour is very 'dry' and absorbent (perhaps use it sparingly, along with some wheat flour). Chunks of fruit or vegetables can make the dough very heavy and might make it reluctant to rise. When I made these Garden Mint and Courgette Batards I increased the amount of yeast slightly, thinking that it might help the dough to rise, with all that grated courgette on board. You'll be able to feel, as you mix, whether the dough needs a little more water. 

Experiment

Trying new flours and new techniques, lately, has inspired me to up my game a bit. It's useful to have a tried and tested, go-to recipe for your daily bread but it can get a bit boring. Instead of searching around for a new recipe, why not create your own? Bread is basically just flour, water, yeast and salt in the correct proportions. Add some nuts, make a plait, sprinkle on some seeds. Having mastered the master method, you can confidently experiment and make a different loaf every time.

What's your favourite bread recipe tweak?