How to make home-made bread {Recipe and tutorial}

Rustic/Moldovan Bread

This is a recipe for Moldovan bread that my mother and grand-mother used to make. It is a mix between rustic Italian and sour dough bread. It does take some time, but the results are amazing! I got this recipe from my grandmother, who used to make it in a wood oven, and enough for a couple of weeks for a large family. I had to to tweak the recipe to work for two loafs in a regular oven. You can add different kinds of flour, but for this recipe I used organic unbleached white flour. I also use sun-flower seed oil in all my recipes, but you can certainly use vegetable/canola oil.

Ingredients:

Warm Water	2 cups
Active Dry yeast	2 tbsp
Sugar	1 tbsp
Sun-flower seed oil	4 tbsp
Salt	1 tsp
Flour	5 cups

Step by step tutorial

1. In a large bowl mix the

 warm water, sugar, the yeast, 

and a cup of flour. 

Mix it with a spoon until smooth.

2. Leave it for about 15 minutes, so that the yeast starts doing its magic. It should start to bubble up.

3. Add the oil, salt and mix it well. 

Start adding flour little by little and mix it gently and it is all incorporated and it comes together.

4. Sprinkle some flour on a flat surface, take out the dough and start kneading until all the stickiness is gone. I usually do it for about 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

5. Place back in a large bowl. Make sure you rub in some oil (or butter) on the sides of the bowl to prevent the dough from sticking. Cover  it with some cling wrap and let it sit 30 to 40 min, until the dough has risen to almost double its size or to fill the bowl.

6. Knead the dough again, as it is super fluffy and let it rest for 15 minutes. Now to the fun part!

Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces and shape each third into a rope. Braid the dough making sure to tuck the ends under. 

7. Place the braid in a greased bread loaf pan and let it rise for another 15 min to fill the whole pan. 

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 C / 390 F for about 20 mins until the crust turns golden brown.

8. Remove from the oven and the pans, rub a little bit of oil all over your bread loafs, let cool for 15 minutes and Voila! - you've got some home-made, from scratch rustic bread.

~ Iuliana

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