I know I’ve made claims about my special banana cake recipe and that recipe is simply superb and just too easy BUT this time, I take my topi off to Yeo for the easiest bread recipe ever.
Even if you haven’t baked anything in your life, I bet you could bake this bread.
Especially if you enjoy chewy bread that’s stuffed full of pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
Bread that is not made with white flour. (Ooooh, the white culprits.)
Bread that’s healthy. Made with organic rye flour and organic (unbleached) wholemeal flour.
When Yeo told me about this recipe, I didn’t really believe him. After all, he is a bread maestro. He makes things sound easy.
But I did taste his bread and I must say I was impressed. (As an aside: Did I tell you that I took home to Penang 3 slices of his homemade bread on the AirAsia flight from KL and the bread still tasted divine upon arrival? Make that 3 slices of homemade bread AND a box of sinfully rich butter cake and marble cake, tar-pau’d from the famous OUG weekend market.)
He made it sound too easy so I was keen on trying his recipe out only to find that I didn’t have the flours needed to make this bread and I had been way too buggered by work and projects to pop into Jusco to get my organic flours.
Until last week when I managed to get to Queensbay Mall.
I say this recipe is easy because I didn’t even need to knead the dough.
I just mixed everything up, put it aside to rise for a few hours, came back to stir it a bit, left it to rise again for an hour and then scooped the dough into a loaf pan and popped it into the oven. About 40 minutes later, the bread was ready!
I am not kidding.
If you’re new to bread-making/bread-baking and want something fail-proof, this has got to be it.
For this wholemeal rye bread, you’ll need to mix together in a fairly large mixing bowl:
3 cups wholemeal flour (I used Country Farm brand from Jusco, 500gm for RM4.10)
1 cup rye flour (also Country Farm brand from Jusco, 500gm for RM4.50)
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon salt (mine’s Himalayan Rock Salt)
2 cups warm water
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
You’ll get this gooey mess when everything’s nicely combined. Leave this in a warm corner of your kitchen for 3 hours. It will rise and become double its size. After 3 hours, stir it a bit (to deflate those air bubbles created by the yeast activity) and leave it for another 1 hour. It will start to rise again.
Get a loaf pan. I didn’t grease it but just sprinkled plain flour in it. I was worried the bread might not come out of the pan if I didn’t do that.
Scoop the dough into the loaf pan. (Remember to pre-heat your oven for 20 minutes at 180C before this.) Put the pan into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Once done, cool and pop bread out.
As this bread does not have any preservative or bread improver or anything faintly synthetic, it keeps well in a tightly covered container in the freezer. To serve, just thaw it by leaving it out at room temperature for a few hours or warming it in the oven for a few minutes. Great with pats of fine butter.
I found that a slice of this dense and nutty bread keeps me full the whole morning! It must be all those healthy seeds!
Thanks, Yeo for a brilliant bread recipe. This will probably be my fave bread too!