Thursday 31 July 2008

Baking bread for Lammas

A good way to celebrate the start of the harvest at Lammas, or Lughnasad, is to bake your own bread.

Here is a recipe for wholemeal bread that makes two loaves.

Ingredients:
30ml dried yeast
5ml sugar
900ml water
25g fat (lard or white margarine)
1.5kg wholemeal flour
30ml salt

Tools:
A mixing bowl
2 loaf tins or baking trays

Method:
Dissolve the sugar in the water and add the yeast, then leave it in a warm place for 15 minutes, or until frothy. In a bowl, add the salt to the flour, then rub in the fat. Stir in the yeasty water until it forms a stiff dough that leaves the sides of the mixing bowl clean. Then either knead the dough by hand on a floured surface or use a food processor until it is no longer sticky. Oil the mixing bowl, put the dough back in it, cover it with a clean cloth and leave the dough to rise in a warm place. It should double in size. Then knead the dough once more, divide it in two, and put it into two bread tins or make two big balls of dough and put them on baking trays. Leave them to rise again for 1.5 hours, then put them in a preheated oven at 230C or gas mark 8 for about 40 minutes or until brown.

You might want to share a few crumbs of the warm bread with the birds in your garden, as a Lammas offering.

If you would prefer to make white bread, here are some links to recipes:

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread.jsp
www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mostof_homemadebread.shtml
www.nibblous.com/recipe/649

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the recipe. Baking homemade bread has become a lost art.

Badwitch said...

Glad the recipe was useful. Homemade bread is delicious and much cheaper than buying it from the shop.

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