Brown Bread

Your cut-out-and-keep guide to the fundamentals of cooking

Agood loaf of brown bread should have a nice crisp crust and be soft and tender inside. As with all cooking, the quality of ingredients make all the difference. We rely so much on artisan suppliers for superior flours, and it’s important for the home cook to experiment with different brands. They can vary a lot, so try a few to find what you like.

We use a mix of brown and white flours in our brown bread. I find that if you use only brown flour, you get a bread that is a lot denser and can end up quite dry. White flour adds a bit of lightness.

Unlike in some other baking, the ingredients in brown bread need to be mixed together well. It’s a mistake to leave lumps in the mix with brown bread.

Also, it’s key to bake at a high heat for the first 15 minutes, in order to achieve that crisp crust, and then reduce the heat to make sure it cooks slowly and cooks through.

Make sure to buy a good-quality loaf tin, and when you’re filling it, leave a 2cm gap between the dough and the top of the tin. This leaves room for it to rise when baking.

I most often add pumpkin seeds to the mix, as in this recipe, but walnuts or hazelnuts also work well and provide a bit of crunch.