Poppy seed white bread

This bread is light, fluffy and made with yeast. Perfect with soup, for sandwiches or toasted. Children especially love it. You can also bake it in a bread machine, although the texture will be quite dense (I’ve tried it). Highly recommended – it’s delicious!

Makes 1 loaf.

Ingredients for simple poppy seed white bread:

• 650 g strong white bread flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 50 g butter, at room temperature or melted
• 1 tsp sugar
• 7 g dried yeast or 15 g fresh yeast
• 375 ml milk, at room temperature
• 1 medium egg, beaten
• 40 g poppy seeds

Additionally:

• milk, for brushing

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

Place the flour, poppy seeds, sugar, salt and dried yeast in a large bowl (if using fresh yeast, prepare a yeast starter first). Add the milk, butter and beaten egg. Knead until you have a soft, smooth and non-sticky dough. Place the dough in a bowl, cover with a linen tea towel and leave in a warm place to rise until doubled in size (about 1½–2 hours).

Grease a 29 × 10 cm loaf tin with butter and dust with flour.

Knock back the risen dough briefly, then shape it into a long loaf and place it in the prepared tin. The dough should reach roughly halfway up the sides of the tin. Cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place to rise again until it has increased significantly in volume (about 1 hour). The loaf should rise well above the rim of the tin.

Gently brush the risen loaf with milk. Place in an oven preheated to 230°C and bake for 15 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 200°C and bake for a further 20–30 minutes, until the bread is well baked and golden. When tapped on the bottom, the finished loaf should sound hollow. Remove from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Method for bread machine users:

Place all the yeast dough ingredients into the bread machine in the following order: liquid ingredients first, then dry ingredients, and finally the yeast. Select the ‘dough’ programme (kneading and first rise). Once the programme has finished, remove the dough, knead it lightly, and continue according to the main recipe above.

Enjoy!

Recipe source: Easy Baking by Linda Collister.