Or basically any recipe that can use up bread flour, as I have a few bags of it and I don’t make bread, it scares me.

Think I ended up with them in 2020 when I was trying to get cake flour (remember bake-mania?!) and kept getting given bread flour as a substitute.

What are some ways I could use it up that don’t require me to be Paul Hollywood?

14 comments

  1. Look up some easy bread rolls recipe (BBC good food have a few). You can make a batch and freeze some and use them for lunches or to have with soup etc.
    Edit: or use it to make pizza dough and make your own pizzas.

  3. Try soda bread first. It’s almost ridiculously easy, like it shouldn’t work, but it does. This is a recipe my mum gave me, so excuse the weird mixture of metric and imperial measurements:

    – 6oz of plain flour
    – 6oz of wholemeal flour
    – half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
    – half a teaspoon of salt
    – 300ml sour milk, buttermilk, milk with 1tsp vinegar, or watered-down plain yogurt

    1. Preheat the oven to 200C
    2. Mix the flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a big bowl
    3. Add the milk or whatever you’re using and mix it with a fork until it forms a wettish dough
    4. Sprinkle some flour on a baking tray and on your hands, then turn the dough out onto the baking tray, knead it very briefly and make it into a large ball. Use a sharp knife to cut a cross into the top (helps it rise evenly and possibly lets the Devil out of the bread, I’ll leave that one up to you!)
    5. Bake it in the oven for 34 minutes (yes, really).
    6. Take it out and let it cool on a wire rack.

  4. I struggled making bread for years. Almost certainly any issues you have with bread not rising is either out of date yeast or not kneeding enough.

    If the recipe said knees for 10 mins then I did exactly that.

    One day I did it for long for some reason and it made all the difference.

    You really have to work the dough

  5. just make flat bread, no faffing about with resting dough, flour, water, olive oil, pinch of salt…mix, flatten, chuck it on a frying pan lovely…you can then play around with flavours if
    you want…or add baking powder to help get more bubbles in your bread

  8. This is the recipe that I use which is very roughly adapted from the recipe for Pain Français in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it requires four ingredients and takes a fair amount of time but almost no effort.

    Put 1/2 ounce fresh yeast or 1/4 ounce dry yeast into a bowl with 4 tablespoons of warm water, with a pinch of sugar for fresh yeast, mix and leave that for five minutes. Add one cup of water, 2 to 3 tablespoons of salt, your yeast and 1 pound flour to a large bowl and bring it all together, it should be slightly sticky but not so wet that it’s not solid, knead it vigorously for 5-10 minutes on a floured surface, let it rest for 5 minutes, knead it again and keep repeating until the dough will bounce back when you press into it. Then put it in a well floured bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave it until it doubles in size

    Then take the dough out and deflate it by folding the edges in on themselves, do this twice if you want you can do a second rise of 1 to 2 hours and after that repeat this process for a third rise if you’d like but neither is necessary, you can just put the dough aside to rest while the oven is heating.

    Bring the oven to 230 degrees, put the dough in your baking pan, moisten the top with a brush and some water, and then with a razor or very sharp knife score the top of the dough in the pattern of an X and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, let it cool slowly in the oven.

    I make this a couple of times a week and what I’ll usually do is make my dough at night, put it in the fridge to make it rise more slowly while I’m sleeping, then do the rest in the morning, depending on how I’m feeling I’ll just do that one rise and put it directly in the oven or I’ll let it rise for a second time while I’m getting ready and eating breakfast.

    This is a good basic recipe that you can change or elaborate as you like when you get more comfortable with baking, like using sourdough or brewer’s yeast instead of plain baker’s yeast, mixing different flours, enriching the recipe with some butter and eggs etc.

  10. Jamie Oliver’s “basic bread” recipe was the start of my bread making hobby, even now the recipe I use is descended from it. its really easy to do and forms a satisfying round loaf when just placed on an oven tray, and unlike some other recipes it cooks at 180C for 30 minutes for a loaf made from 500g of flour, so less energy cost.

    today i made a herby plaited loaf with an egg and black pepper glaze using his dough recipe as a base

  11. Standard bread recipe, measure accurate amounts, and never skimp on the kneading phase.

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