Homemade Bread with Sprinkled Sesame – an ever evolving romance

Amongst all the things baked at home, nothing fills my heart with more gratitude and love than a freshly baked bread loaf just out of the oven.

We love cooking different kinds of recipes – simple or elaborate. Inspiration in our kitchen comes from different cuisines, cultures, cookbooks and random recipe discoveries online. Sometimes the menu is influenced by our travels and at times, they are a result of conversation I strike up with people I come across or other foodie friends and of course, from instagram and blog posts of my blogger friends. For years, I have been nervous about making dough, specially for cakes. I guess it’s because there is no room for altering proportions or zany experiments in such baking. The Z-Sisters have used this ignorance of mine to their advantage. Accompanied by our dearest Lady M, they have transformed into expert bakers. They bake almost everything – cupcakes, cookies, a variety of cakes. We also bake meatloaves and regular breads at home. Amongst all the things are baked at home, nothing fills my heart with more gratitude and love than a freshly baked bread loaf just out of the oven. The act of making a simple recipe coming to such a meaningful fruition is soul satisfying.

In our initial days, we used the regular self-raising flour to make our breads (images towards the end of the blogpost captured this journey). For a baking pan, we used a steel serving container left behind by one of the caterers from some party at home! Now we have bought a non-stick loaf-baking pan. Also, we use mostly atta or whole wheat, occasionally throwing in chopped nuts, pumpkin seeds and other ingredients we fancy. And gosh, we do fancy our sesame seeds! The addition of sesame not only ups the glamour quotient of our bread loaf, but also makes the taste punchier.

Homemade Bread with Sprinkled Sesame

• Servings: 15 slices
• Time: 2hrs 40mins (resting time=2hrs 20mins, baking time=20mins)
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Category=Bread;

Simple ingredients go into making homemade bread

Before going into the oven

Ingredients

3½ cups atta/wheat flour
1 tbsp honey (we also use brown sugar sometimes)
1 ½ tsp dry yeast
1 cup of milk, room temperature
2 tbsp white oil
1 tbsp butter – for greasing the pan and also to brush the loaf once its baked
½ tsp white sesame seeds
½ tsp black sesame seeds
1 tsp salt
½ cup warm water

1 bread loaf baking pan (27cms x 15cms stainless steel)

Method

• In a big glass bowl, pour the atta/whole wheat. Add salt and stir the mixture well using a spatula. Keep aside.
• In a small glass bowl, add honey and dry yeast to warm water. Stir well, keep aside for 10 minutes and let it rise.
• Add the raised yeast to the atta and combine into it using a spatula. Add the milk gradually and keep stirring the mixture to make it a rough dough.
• Once the dough is ready, add oil to it and mix. Cover the bowl with a cling film and set aside for an hour.
• Grease a loaf-baking pan with butter. Transfer the dough from the glass bowl to the pan. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top. Cover the pan with a cling film and set aside for another hour. The dough will rise considerably, so while wrapping the cling film, keep it a bit loose, to accommodate the rise.
• Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC and bake the loaf for 20 minutes. Keep a check to see that the loaf is baked evenly.
• Brush the loaf generously with butter once it comes out of the oven and while it’s still hot. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
• Turn the loaf over on a grill wrack. Brush butter all around the surface of the loaf. Keep aside until the loaf cools down. Air the loaf all around in an even manner (we keep the grill tray on top of a raised surface).
• Cut the loaf into medium slices. Keep in mind that the slices from this loaf are quite soft, so slicing it very thin might result in crumbling.

Butter toast

French toast

You can make delicious French Toasts with this home made bread or simple buttered toasts with sugar sprinkled on top!

Regular flour bread in our initial days of bread making

Homemade buns

With all the efforts that are taking place for self-isolation at this hour, I feel blessed and fortunate to be able to have both the meals together at home with family. Cooking or baking is not something that we have taken up suddenly as a new activity. We have always cooked at home. However, with everybody working and studying from home, while we plan the menu nowadays, we sometimes tend to tend to forget that weekdays are actual working days. It’s not a fancy weekend meal that can be elaborate to make my crew lethargic! Working or distant school learning from home may have their technical challenges for those who aren’t initiated into it. However, it’s doable if you adhere to a similar structure and routine that entailed earlier… yes, it’s easier said than done. It’s may be challenging for some give each other spaces to work or to study, even though we all might be in close physical proximity and a nudge’s distance.

I have to say though, I am inspired by how everyone is trying to make changes and adapting to their environments daily to meet the new challenges of the hour. Much like our ever-evolving bread story… ingredients may keep changing, but the binding, purpose and soul of the bread remains the same!

Keep your menu simple, keep it delicious, keep it homemade. Do share your daily personal food stories with me and stay tuned as I share mine.

Unblogging it all… Ishita

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Disclaimer: This isn’t a sponsored post, nor are there any affiliated links for any of the brands that may have been mentioned in this blogpost. The subject, story, opinions and views stated here are my own and all images are from my personal album. While you enjoy reading my posts with lot of visuals, please do not use any material from these posts.