Bread

BREAD

The aroma of freshly baked bread is something that creates a warm comfortable feeling throughout the house.  It is one of my favourite smells in the world.  Like most kids my youngest brother Nilesh and I adored bread. My early memories of freshly baked white loaf is sitting down to tea with Nilesh  where we would  easily demolish a crusty white loaf (boflo) with cups of chai.

In Dar-es-Salaam however, due to problems with electricity bakeries were not always able to supply breads to the city.  It was then I decided to give home baking a try.  I asked my neighbour, an expert at baking to share her recipe with me and from that day forward, baking bread has become something I enjoy very much.  It is a real pleasure to see something wonderful created out of yeast, flour and water however, it is a process that you cannot rush. The whole process of binding, kneading, proving, shaping should be coforting and relaxing in the anticipation of the warm rich aroma that will soon fill your kitchen and then your entire house.

These days, there are breadmakers, that make our lives pretty easy.  There are also bread mixes that are stocked on the supermarket shelves which take out the bother of measuring the ingredients however, bread is fairly easy to bake and once you grasp the process, you can add other ingredients such as seeds and herbs to make the bread even more interesting.

People often think it is difficult to bake bread at home but once you have tried and baked a decent loaf, you would never want to go back to the shop bought synthetic variety.  It is easy to have fresh bread whenever you want with my recipe.

Here is what you need

White fl all purpose          4 cups

Butter melted                     4 tab sp

water                                      1 cup

Salt                                       2 tea sp

Sugar                                   2 tea sp

Yeast                                    2 1/2 tea sp

Take a bowl add dry yeast to warm water and sugar mix well leave for 10 min.

In a big bowl put fl and salt add the yeast mixture and knead dough until very smooth. ( appx 10 min)add oil and punch the dough again for few min.Place bread dough in greased bawl,cover and let rise double in size for appx 1 hrs.

Nead the daugh again divede the dough in to small rolls place on the greased baking tray.Preheat the oven at 400 back for 15 to 20 min.