Recipes

Quick and easy bread dough

Sometimes the best recipes are the ones that work hardest.

Chef’s easy bread dough is a brilliant base recipe to have up your sleeve, particularly when you’re working in a busy catering environment or are pressed for time at home. From starting the dough to freshly baked bread, you can have something ready to eat in around three hours.

And it doesn’t have to become a loaf. The same dough can be used for pizzas, focaccia, cinnamon buns, cheese and Marmite swirls, tomato and chilli rolls and plenty more. Change the shape, fillings and toppings and you’ve got something completely different without starting again.

Good bread starts with good flour. We recommend using the best flour you can afford. We use Wildfarmed flour, giving this simple recipe a great foundation.

Quick, easy and incredibly versatile.

Ingredients

1 kg Wildfarmed strong bread flour (or another good-quality flour)
20 g fine sea salt
20 g fresh yeast, or approximately 10 g dried yeast
600 g lukewarm water
50 g olive oil

Method

1. Activate the yeast

Take around 50 g of the lukewarm water from the total quantity and mix it with the yeast. Leave somewhere warm for around 5 minutes. It should begin to bubble, which tells you the yeast is active and ready to use.

2. Make the dough

Add the remaining water and olive oil to the bowl of a stand mixer first. Daryll recommends adding the liquids before the flour to help prevent flour from becoming stuck at the bottom of the bowl.

Add the salt, followed by the Wildfarmed bread flour and activated yeast. Try not to put the salt directly onto the yeast.

3. Knead

Using a dough hook, mix on speed two for around 8 minutes, then check the dough. Continue mixing as required. Daryll mixes his for around 12 minutes in total.

You’re looking for an elastic dough that stretches very thinly without immediately tearing. When stretched, you should almost be able to see through it.

4. First prove

Cover the bowl and leave the dough somewhere warm for approximately 1 hour, or until it has roughly doubled in size.

Dampen your hands before handling the dough to help prevent it from sticking, then gently knock it back to remove the excess air.

5. Rest and shape

If the dough keeps springing back while you’re trying to shape or roll it, leave it to rest for around 10 minutes. When you come back, the dough should be more relaxed and easier to work with.

Now shape it depending on what you’re making. Use it as a base for:

Focaccia
Pizza
Cinnamon buns
Cheese and Marmite swirls
Tomato and chilli rolls
Bread rolls
Or simply a good loaf of bread

6. Prove again

Leave your shaped dough to prove until it has almost doubled in size.

A gentle press with your finger should slowly spring back. Daryll describes it as being a little like a balloon that’s a couple of days old: it still springs back, just not quite as quickly.

7. Bake

Bake at 180°C for approximately 25 minutes, adjusting the cooking time depending on the size and shape of the bread you’ve made.

Steam can give the bread an extra boost as it rises. In a professional oven, Daryll uses 50% steam. At home, you can place a small ovenproof dish of water at the bottom of the oven while it heats.

One dough, plenty of possibilities

The real brilliance of this recipe is its versatility. One quick dough gives our chefs a base for lots of different breads, making it particularly useful in a busy catering kitchen where simplicity, speed and flexibility matter.

Start with focaccia in the morning, turn the next batch into pizza, or take it in a sweeter direction with cinnamon buns. Once you know the base recipe, you can make it your own.