whole again

every so often i throw my hands in the air and begin re-eliminating all the *white stuff* that seems to surreptitiously creep back into our life. i haven't quite gone the whole hog and started grinding our own organic wheat, but i dragged the bag of wholemeal flour outta the pantry this morning, and with a backward glance at our broken breadmaker, i rolled up my sleeves.

think *five* and into a huge bowl, throw:
500ml lukewarm water
5tsp surebake yeast
5 tsp raw sugar
stir briefly, cover with folded apron and leave on bench for a quarter of an hour until yeast is nice and frothy. forget that it's waiting there and return an hour later to see yeast is *incredibly* nice and frothy.

now throw in
5 cups wholemeal flour
1 happy egg
2 tsp salt
mix around a few times with wooden spoon until dough gathers together, there's no need to touch dough if you don't like to, which i don't. (i don't like playing with that preschool goop stuff either.) place in oven at 5o degrees celsius, covered with folded apron for about an hour and a half, until dough has risen to twice its original size.

sprinkle risen dough with white flour and ease it onto the bench. give it a wee knead and quickly shape into 2 loaves, place side by side on flat tray.
whizz it back into the oven, still at 50 degrees celsius.
let it rise for the second time, for about an hour.
turn up oven to 180 degrees celsius.
bake whole loaves 25 minutes until deliciously golden brown.
cool on bench. attempt to beat the gannets back with a large feather duster... oh, quickly remove loaf from gannets' reach for *photographic purposes* which sounds official enough for said gannets to fly off of their own accord.

this bread has a wonderfully soft moist texture without being "heavy" - i think it's the egg that does it.

at our place, the thick slices are devoured warm with fresh creamery butter and raspberry jam.
oh, i am feeling so domestic-goddessy right now:
the smell of fresh-baked bread is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe... they're so perky, i love that.
(movie line)