Series 3, Episode 2, 8 Strand Plaited Loaf
Are you bready for the recipe? Here it is: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/eight-strand_plaited_57815 courtesy of Paul Hollywood.
I love baking bread! I can prove it! Here are my pre and post proving dough pics:
I found the plaiting quite straightforward. I watched a couple of You Tube videos because I wasn’t sure about a couple of the steps, I’ll give you an example: “Step 1: place 8 under 7 and over 1” I wasn’t sure whether 8 should go under 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 and THEN over 1, or whether it should go under 7, then over all the others (it was the latter). It was quite difficult to get the dough strands to be long enough, they kept shrinking! I ended up using a technique where I was rolling the strands in the air rather than on the work surface and letting it dangle – it seemed to work! Here’s my dough all plaited, then baked:
The end was a bit informal looking (the left) but overall I was pleased with how it looked, smelt and tasted. Here’s some of the inside goodness:
Looks like real bread! We made ham sandwiches with it and it was gone within an hour. Here’s the feedback from my guinea pigs:
“Delicious, well done”
“Crusty on the outside, soft in the middle”
If I were to make this again I’d like to neaten up the plaiting, but I think for a first attempt it’s not too bad. I hope that you also get chance to bake this bread because you deserve to enjoy it.
Lily
