{RECIPE} Easy-Peasy-White-Crockpot-Bread

I’m SO excited about todays post! : )

If you’ve “liked” Frills and Fun on Facebook you may have seen that I’ve been experimenting this week with making bread in my crockpot. I had seen this idea up on Pinterest, thought it was exciting and interesting, tried out the recipe and FAIL!
It did NOT work out as I had been expecting!

Back to experimenting, and about a week and several recipes later I have SUCCESS! : D

I honestly was AMAZED by how well the bread turned out, how moist and delicious it was and COULD NOT wait to share it will you all!

So, today I have the recipe for a basic white loaf.
I’m planning on figuring out more recipes soon but wanted to start with the basic white as it was the most economical when I was wasting my precious baking ingredients : D

Ingredients:

3 ½ cups of all-purpose white flour (plus more for your board)
1 tsp of salt
2 tbsp of dried yeast (IMPORTANT: make sure your yeast is at room temperature!!)
1 ½ cups of luke warm water. (if you’re not sure whether it’s the right temp, drop a little on your wrist, as you would baby’s bath water. It should be warm and comfortable on your skin, not feel hot or cold).

Method:

Mix your warm water & yeast together and let sit for around 15 minutes or until the water is VERY cloudy and bubbly. (if the water doesn’t go cloudy or bubbly your yeast isn’t going to work properly. Either the yeast or the water was the wrong temperature, or the yeast has gone bad.
Don’t move on with the next step until you’ve sorted this part out as you will just waste your ingredients! (trust me! I know!! ; )

Turn your crockpot onto low. (Now, for the actual dough making part I used my kitchen aid mixer. If you don’t have a mixer you can either use the dough setting on a bread maker machine or the tradition kneading method.)

Using the dough attachment on your mixer, mix together the flour and salt.
Then with the mixer running on low slowly pour in your water and yeast.
The dough will slowly begin to come together, first looking flaky, then elasticy and finally into a round shape. The dough is very wet which is good. On my first try with this recipe I added extra flour, MISTAKE! The wet dough works well when cooking in the crockpot.

Once your dough is very soft, smooth and elastic, scrape it out on to a floured board.

Melt 2 tbsp of butter and tip it into your empty mixing bowl (the bowl that you used to make the dough).

Put the dough back in & move around in the butter, making sure that all of the outside of the dough is covered. (this will stop the dough from drying out while it’s rising).

Cover your bowl with cling-film (plastic wrap : )

Place your covered bowl into your crockpot!
Putting your bowl containing the dough into your crockpot is going to serve two purposes. It’s giving the dough a lovely, warm place to rise which will allow it to grow and rise beautifully, plus it’s heating up your crockpot ready to be nice and hot for the “baking”.

You’re going to leave the dough there until it doubles in size. This will take around 45 mins to an hour (but don’t worry if it takes longer!)

Before taking the dough out, cut a square piece of wax paper that is going to be big enough to cover the bottom and sides of your crockpot.
Cut slits in each corner so that it can wrap around the round edges.

Once dough has doubled, scrape it out onto your prepared wax paper. Flour your hands and gently shape it into a round shape, keeping handling to a minimum.

TURN YOUR CROCKPOT ONTO HIGH.

Pick the wax paper and dough up and place into the crock pot. Make sure that the paper isn’t touching the top of the dough.

Cover and cook.

You’re going to cook the bread for around 1 ½ hours or until when prodded your finger doesn’t leave an indentation. Turn your crockpot down to low for the last 30 minutes.

Take out and enjoy warm with butter or dipping oil. (while doing a little happy-dance cos you can’t believe that you’ve actually just “baked” delicious, easy bread in your CROCKPOT!! : D