Farl - Bread!

This bread is an English loaf traditionally baked on the bottom of the oven, hence it’s other name -  oven bottoms...
It is a very easy to make and versatile recipe...

Go on...Give it a try...

You will need -

500g white stone-ground flour

1 Tablespoon salt (Himalayan Crystal salt if possible)

30g fresh yeast (obtainable from bakery at PnP)

60g butter, softened/melted  (or olive oil/ or sun flower oil)

300ml lukewarm water

1 teaspoon sugar

Put the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in lukewarm water and pour onto the flour. Start mixing then - Add the butter/oil and mix together into a dough.

Knead for 5 minutes.  – Don’t knead to long!

Sprinkle some flour around the surface you are kneading on and bring a little in as you go if the mixture is too sticky.

Allow to rise for 1 hour (proving) in a nice warm spot – don’t leave longer as it will ‘over rise’!

Tip the dough out and shape into a ball. Place on a greased baking tray and flatten the dough into a circle about 5cm thick.

Sprinkle the top with some flour.
 Leave to rise for another hour in a warm spot.

Preheat the oven to 220 degree Celcuis

Starting from the middle, make vertical slashes onto the dough all the way around.

Or slash the dough in a square shape on the top.

Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

As you can see in the pictures - I varied the recipe and outcome ;-)

In the top picture - I doubled the recipe and added 300gr Brown bread flour - also stone ground.

I roughly divided the mixture into some rolls (just break off little bigger than golf ball size chunks of dough and place next to each other in a tin), a bread loaf tin and a bread round.

I brushed with a little milk and sprinkled sesame seeds on top.

The picture above,(doubled also!) I again roughly divided into rolls, a loaf tin and then made a flat bread with olives, garlic, fresh rosemary and thyme from the garden, and drizzled with some olive oil...

One of my knights favourite things is olive bread...

Enjoy with some warm winter soup!