So you’d love to bake some delicious bread this weekend. But the sun is shining, you’re busy around the house or you’d just like to have some downtime. Here’s the solution – three quick and simple breads you can bake today. Follow along and you’ll have delicious, warm bread ready to eat within the hour (and usually more quickly than that).
Each recipe uses just a few ingredients – the simplest has just two ingredients. And you can change each recipe to include the flavours that you love. So let’s get baking!
Cheesy soda bread
Grate some strong Cheddar into this quick dough for a delicious lunch time treat. Or instead, you could add in seeds, chopped olives or sundried tomatoes, herbs and spices or nuts to flavour your bread.
Ingredients: To follow the recipe, you’ll need bread flour, buttermilk, bicarbonate of soda, salt and grated cheese (or flavours of your choice).
You can substitute the buttermilk with a mixture of plain yoghurt and milk (dairy-free alternatives will also work in this recipe) soured with a teaspoon of vinegar.
Two-ingredient flatbreads
Yes really! And these may quickly become your new favourite quick bake. Delicious with many dishes – perhaps a light lunch, or to mop up the sauce from a stew or curry.
Ingredients: To bake along with this recipe, you’ll need self-raising flour and some plain yoghurt. You can substitute in dairy-free yoghurt, and use plain flour plus a teaspoon (per 150g flour) of baking powder instead of self-raising flour if needed.
And of course you can flavour these just how you like them. Add in spices, herbs or perhaps serve with garlic butter.
Roasted red pepper and feta cornbread
Quickly becoming a favourite in this house, this bread also happens to be gluten-free (do check all the ingredients you use are certified gluten-free before using if needed).
Ok, this bread takes a little longer to bake. But it’s brilliant to accompany lunch and you can choose your toppings too. I’m a wuss with spicy food but this bread really suits a chilli cheese flavour – just chop a red chilli into the batter to suit your taste and sprinkle the bread with plenty of grated cheese (you could even stir some in) before baking.
In this version, I roast red sweet peppers and use these to top the bread along with crumbled feta cheese. I also added in paprika, smoked paprika and a little cayenne pepper to the dry ingredients. Delicious!
Ingredients: To bake along you’ll need fine ground cornmeal, buttermilk, eggs, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, spices of your choice, maple syrup (or use another sweet syrup, or omit) and butter, plus toppings of your choice.