The bread turned out well, though a 7.5 hour rising time is not ideal for during the day. Something to make before bed and leave to rise overnight, really.

500g multiseed flour (Allinson's, quite nice)
8g sunflower oil
A generous tablespoon of fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon dried yeast
About 325ml water
Rather a lot of ground black pepper
1 pinch of sugar

I think next time I'll up the yeast a bit more, and see whether I can get it to rise within a couple of hours with this little sugar.

Tags: bread, food

Elizabeth David maintains that dried active yeast doesn't need any sugar to reconstitute, and that letting it work slowly gives you better bread. I'm not entirely convinced by it, but Elizabeth David is one of the people with whom One Does Not Argue if one is wise, and I'd really rather not use any sugar if I can avoid it.

It's certainly clouding nicely, though not producing any perceptible froth (it's had about five minutes so far - one with the 1:1 mixture of yeast granules & sugar that the tin recommends would have a small amount of froth). If it hasn't done anything after another half hour I might add a pinch of sugar to kickstart it.

Tags: bread, cooking, food