The most basic bread recipe.

[Billy-o]

There's also a bunch of red lentil and chickpea recipes for flatbread and leavened with bicarb.

Some of them are hilariously simple. Like, a cup of lentils into two cups of water. Soak for four hours or overnight. Into the blender and you are done. Just fry the batter. I really like these with eggs.

Here's a roll.

 

[Woody girl]

There's also a bunch of red lentil and chickpea recipes for flatbread and leavened with bicarb.

Some of them are hilariously simple. Like, a cup of lentils into two cups of water. Soak for four hours or overnight. Into the blender and you are done. Just fry. I really like these

Sounds perfect for me, as its gluten free. I've just put some red lentils in to soak and I'll have a go at them tomorrow. Morning.. I like wraps , but the g/f ones are so expensive.! Sounds like this would make good wraps for my favourite tuna salad wrap sarnies.

 

[Astrochicken]

My usual is just strong bread flour, water, salt, yeast, sugar, sometimes with a little olive oil to help with the texture.

Something I've found is to be careful of the salt quantity and when you bring the salt into contact with the yeast - seems that even a little bit 'too much' is enough to shut down the yeast, with my results becoming flat even after ideal proving conditions if I've not paid enough attention when measuring.

Another thing I've found is to make the water slightly warm, to help wake up the yeast (I normally use the dry packet yeast), and I usually add the sugar into the warm water with the yeast for 5-10 mins to give it something to work on. The result is that the water gets a little foamy, but this also tells me if the yeast is still alive before I add it to the flour - I've had in-date yeast fail multiple times and so now I like to see the yeast in action before I waste time, energy and flour trying to make a loaf that may never rise.

Finally, a nice trick I came across years ago was to save the water left over from cooking rice / pasta / potatoes and to use this water, as it has some dissolved starch in that also seems to help get the process going. Obviously need to be careful about cooling and storing the starchy cooked water to make sure it's safe. I usually cool mine as quickly as I can outside with a lid on the pan, and then I freeze it in bottles, taking it out to defrost when I know I'm going to make bread. The potato water always seems to make more moist bread than regular water.

 

[Toddy]

My usual is just strong bread flour, water, salt, yeast, sugar, sometimes with a little olive oil to help with the texture.

Something I've found is to be careful of the salt quantity and when you bring the salt into contact with the yeast - seems that even a little bit 'too much' is enough to shut down the yeast, with my results becoming flat even after ideal proving conditions if I've not paid enough attention when measuring.

Another thing I've found is to make the water slightly warm, to help wake up the yeast (I normally use the dry packet yeast), and I usually add the sugar into the warm water with the yeast for 5-10 mins to give it something to work on. The result is that the water gets a little foamy, but this also tells me if the yeast is still alive before I add it to the flour - I've had in-date yeast fail multiple times and so now I like to see the yeast in action before I waste time, energy and flour trying to make a loaf that may never rise.

Finally, a nice trick I came across years ago was to save the water left over from cooking rice / pasta / potatoes and to use this water, as it has some dissolved starch in that also seems to help get the process going. Obviously need to be careful about cooling and storing the starchy cooked water to make sure it's safe. I usually cool mine as quickly as I can outside with a lid on the pan, and then I freeze it in bottles, taking it out to defrost when I know I'm going to make bread. The potato water always seems to make more moist bread than regular water.

To quickly cool a pot; fill the sink with cold water, it needs to be deep enough that the pot 'just' floats. The pot will cool quickly from the outside in.
Works very well to save a pot of hot oil from going overcooked, too.

 

[Billy-o]

Anyone tried asking their local brewer for some 'barm'

I don't know if it is still used in barm cakes, but it is the stll active yeast sludge that remains after a brew.

 

[Pattree]

Local bakers here buy in yeast in 1 kilo blocks. It’s a solid brick so I presume it’s cultured with flour but maybe it’s solid product.

Balm just means yeast as far as I know. I have a balm pot that I used to keep on my window-cill. On warm days after feeding it could “go balmy” and froth all over the place.
I don’t cultivate yeast any more and it certainly takes the recipe out of the “simple” bracket.

pee ess
Yeast cultures for sourdough are so important for some folk that there are sourdough hotels where you leave your sourdough together with a list of its requirements when you go on holiday!