Student cooking tips: How to make your own bread

I'm back at uni.  Suddenly I have to do a mountain of reading,  still don't know where most of my seminars are and haven't a clue as to who my dissertation advisor is.  This left me walking past all the freshers wanting to scream 'Run away while you can'.

The bigger problem faced by most students now is how to stretch out their student loan.  At the moment shops seem to taking great care to target adverts at students in an attempt to separate us from our pennies.  I sped my days finding ways of spending less.  One of the best ways to do this is to begin cooking from scratch.  So many foods can be made simple and cheaply at home; from sauces, to pasta and bread loafs.  The best part is bread only takes 20 mins to cook (not including the time it takes to rise/mix)!

To bake bread you will need the following utensils:

A large mixing bowl.
A mixing spoon.
A set of kitchen scales.
A set of measuring spoons.
A measuring jug
And lastly a loaf tin!

The ingredients you will need:

450g of plain flour (white or brown)
7g of active yeast
1 tsp of sugar
1 tsp of salt
1 tbs of oil
300-500mls of warm water

How to prepare your dough:

The quickest way to ensure the best results is to make sure the temperature in the kitchen remains between 20-35 degrees until the dough goes into the oven.  This helps the yeast to do it's work.  However, first things first,  mix all of the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.  You want to ensure the yeast, salt and sugar and distributed thoroughly through out the flour. This encourages an even texture.  Begin to mix your warm water in slowly.  You won't need all of it.  You want to mix the water into the flour until all of the flour comes into a big clump.  This is the point  at which you are ready to kneed the dough.

Kneading the dough:

To need the dough you will need a flat surface sprinkled with flour.  It is also wise to dust you own hands with flour as this is messy business.  Plop the dough on the surface and begin squishing it together and then flattening it with quick successive motions.  This will pull the flour of the surface, simple sprinkle some more down and keep kneading.  The dough will become more elastic as you knead, once this has begun it is ready to go in a greased loaf tin.  Don't put it in the oven just yet!  The next step is allow the dough to rise.






Tips to getting dough to rise:

Cover the loaf tin and place it in a warm place for an hour.  the loaf will rise on it's own over time - just ensure it's in the appropriate temperature range of 25-35 degrees Celsius.  After the hours up simple place in a oven for 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.


Finally, once you bread has cooled, slice up and enjoy.