A Simple Ceremony

I made this bread for the first time in April and have been making it every week ever since. For those of you who know Vogel's bread from New Zealand, this is the most Vogelly homemade bread there is, the recipe came from a baking friend in New Zealand and it's wonderfully simple to make. I had never made bread before thinking it took way too long and was too much of a fiddly process, therefore I have spent decades buying expensive loaves from gourmet stores, but that's ok, we do love our bread, and it was money well spent, but this bread has changed our lives! two loaves are baked each Thursday morning without fail, one loaf is devoured over the weekend, and the other gets us through the week, it's a joyful ritual and divine eating.

3 cups high grade white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup seed mix, sesame, sunflower, flax

2 teaspoons sea salt

1/2 teaspoon of dried yeast, the stuff they use in bread making machines

2+ cups cold water...start with 2 and add a little more if needed

mix all this together, you want the dough to be really quite sticky and sloppy

cover and leave 15 - 20 hours, doesn't need to be in a hot place

pour the sticky bubbly mess into a 9 inch greased loaf tin (I use a spray cooking oil)

let settle about 30 mins while oven heats to 400f

cover with a little tent of foil that is sealed all around the top of the tin so loaf can rise in oven in its own little micro-environment (I also use the spray cooking oil on the foil as the bread can sometimes rise quite a bit)

bake 30 mins with tent in place, take off tent and bake for a further 25 mins to brown top 


It takes all of a few minutes to throw together