Variations On This Recipe
This recipe is intended to be a simple, foolproof basic bread - if you like it, you'll probably want to move on to more advanced recipes - some of these include eggs, milk, or butter and will produce breads with different flavours and textures - but there are also other things you can do with this basic recipe, for example:
Form It Into Different Shapes
Just divide up the dough and make it into any shape you like - for example, here, I've made a variety of different-shaped bread rolls - (methods, clockwise from top left: 1 - A heap of tiny balls of dough, 2 - A baton shape, slashed diagonally before baking, 3 - A short plait, 4 - A long plait, curled around on itself, 5 - A farmhouse roll - a small ball of dough placed on a larger one, joined by pressing down hard in the middle, 6 - A simple roll, slashed with a cross before baking.)
Feast Bread - To Tear And Share
Transforming the basic dough into Feast Bread - filled with bacon, cheese and onion - and designed for tearing, sharing, and eating with your fingers.
Stuffed Crust Pizza
Use the dough to make Stuffed Crust Pizza
Edible Bread Bowls
They're edible - they're bread-ible! - Completely Consumable Crockery! - Tasty, Toasty Tableware - they're Edible Bread Bowls!
Garlic And Herb Focaccia
Turn the basic bread dough recipe and into Garlic and Herb Focaccia
Breadsticks
Divide the dough into small pieces and roll them out into long thin strips - for crispy breadsticks, roll them thin and bake at a lower temperature until they turn golden brown and brittle.
For soft breadsticks, roll them to finger thickness or more and bake as per the recipe (they won't take so long to cook though, so keep an eye on them). You can let your imagination run wild - cover them with different things (here, tomato and herbs, cheese, oats) and twist them into different shapes before baking.
Harvest Celebration Loaf
Harvest Celebration Loaf
Another use for this basic bread dough (although you need to make double the amount), is a traditional harvest celebration loaf.
