I finally mustered the courage to bake my very first loaf of bread. Properly. Without a bread machine or even the dough hook on my Kenwood Chef. Just good old fashioned mixing and kneading and proofing and bashing and shaping and rising and baking...I naturally turned first to Nigella Lawson's recipe for "The Essential White Loaf" in How to be a Domestic Goddess. The recipe seemed simple enough. Apart from bread flour, yeast and salt. It called for butter as well as potato water to give the bread a light crumb and last longer.
As much as I enjoy reading her recipes. I must say that this recipe failed totally for me. It clearly was not written for a total novice at bread baking. I can understand that Nigella cannot possibly tell me exactly how much water I need, since this will depend on the type of flour and the humidity and temperature at which the bread is being prepared. But precisely because of this, I thought she needed to provide more information on when we knew that the dough had the right amount of water. Instead, I had to deal with "(b)e prepared to add more water, but bear in mind that you want to end up with a shaggy mess."
Wha?! Shaggy mess?? Is this shaggy enough for you?
And about kneading "(y)ou may need to add more flour as you do so; if the dough seems stickily wet, it means you do want a little more and often a lot more."
Huh? A little ...often...more...?
She lost me and I really didn't know what I was doing. 
My mother, who has made bread before, happened to be visiting that day. She took a look at my dough and told me straight away that it needed more water. I had no clue. I though kneading it would help to soften it. But I kneaded, and kneaded, and kneaded, for almost an hour (it's supposed to take only 10 or 15mins) and still the dough was tough! Needless to say, my dough didn't rise. It was hard and tough.
My mother, who has made bread before, happened to be visiting that day. She took a look at my dough and told me straight away that it needed more water. I had no clue. I though kneading it would help to soften it. But I kneaded, and kneaded, and kneaded, for almost an hour (it's supposed to take only 10 or 15mins) and still the dough was tough! Needless to say, my dough didn't rise. It was hard and tough. 
I tried this recipe twice. Adding more water the second time. But still, I had no idea when enough was enough. And still it remained tough with uncooked bits of dough in the middle of the bread.
I decided that I would try other recipes before ever coming near this one again.
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1 comment:
Did u let ur yeast activate in water? i know some of her recipes say put the water with the flour but that's wrong....and i add just a touch of sugar to that water to make the yeast activate since not only water but the yeast feeding on sugar lets it get started....also i don't see in ur post that u added butter which is needed for the dough to smooth out,
I've also found heating my oven and letting the dough raise on top of it helps.
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