Great idea, recipie would be good. I need to do more bread making this year.
put about 750ml of warm water (750ml will make about 2lb loaf I think, but I very much do it by eye now, so have just given the 750ml measurement to give a basic guideline for you) with a tablespoon of honey in a bowl and pop in your Yeast. (you can use dried yeast or bakers yeast whatever you like)
Give it a good stir leave it for a while, until it looks all frothy on top.
now mix in enough flour until it's like a stiff paste. (any bread flour you like, wholemeal, white etc etc.. I usually mix both wholemeal and white)
Put a wet cloth over it or a piece of cling-film and leave it somewhere warm, overnight if you've used dried yeast, or until risen up the bowl and looking frothy if you've used bakers yeast.
Next day or before moving on to next stage, take out half a cup of the paste and put that in the fridge, I usually just spoon a few spoonfuls into a clean empty honey jar.
Now add a couple of teaspoons of salt to the bowl and more flour until you have a proper bread dough consistency.
Kneading it does help, but this type of method doesn't need much kneading.
(if you want to do the half fruit bread thing then at this stage pop half the dough in the tin, adding a couple of handfuls of dried mixed fruit to the remaining dough.. then knead the dried mixed fruit in.. once evenly mixed in, pop the fruited dough next to the other half in the tin)
Put your dough into tins, no more than 3/4 filling it.
Cover with a wet cloth or cling film and leave to rise until it looks like it's going to spill over the edge.
Then put it carefully in a preheated oven. Don't bang it, or it will collapse.
gas mark 7 for 20 minutes followed by gas 5 for 10 to 15 minutes.
Next time you make bread, use the jar of dough paste from the fridge instead of bought yeast, and activate it in exactly the same way by adding to the warm water and honey. NB, if the jar is kept more than a couple of days just open it and tip out a little separated water, then feed with a little extra flour and give it a mix, this will "feed" the yeast culture and keep it going.
