Do It Yourself has become fashionable when it comes to bread. And, what’s more so as to eat a good bread no specialised resources, or bakeries, or dough mixers are required. With a good oven, a great homemade bread can be made. And, as could not have been otherwise, we’re proposing saffron bread.

What ingredients do we need? Flour, water, salt, a few saffron strands and patience. Lots of patience. As bread cannot be rushed. And with these basic ingredients we’ll obtain a tastier and 100% natural bread.

Should you wish, you can also add to our bread other ingredients such as seeds, nuts or aromatic herbs … Just like that, the bread will have a fresh and authentic taste, as with traditional bread, but with an original touch and made by you.

The most important factor in order to procure a fantastic result is obtaining a great pre-ferment. You may well wonder, what’s this about a pre-ferment? That which has been called traditional sourdough (or mother dough).

Obtaining a sourdough (or mother dough) from scratch is very easy. It’s a flour-yeast-water mixture which has been previously fermented for at least 3 or 4 hours. Although ideally, just as our grandmothers did, it is best to leave it rest for a day or use the baking dough of previous day’s bread. This ferment helps the yeast bacteria to enhance all the flavour and aromas possible to our bread. But this requires time. Ideally, it should be left to stand overnight.

Recipe: homemade saffron bread

Ingredients

For the sourdough (or mother dough)

• 100g strong flour (also known as bread flour)
• 100 ml water
• 5g Levital fresh yeast

For the bread dough

• 600g flour equivalent to a total of 200g strong or bread flour, 200g wholemeal flour and 200g rye flour
• 20g fresh yeast
• 300 ml warm mineral water
• 1 tablespoon granulated soy lecithin
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 sprig of fresh parsley
• 2 or 3 La Mancha saffron strands
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon chopped rosemary

Elaboration

The night before preparing the bread, the sourdough (or mother dough) must first be prepared. To do so, mix the flour, water and 5g yeast in a bowl. Let the mixture to stand overnight in the refrigerator, covered with cling-film.

The following day, start preparing the bread by mixing together the flours, yeast, lecithin and aromatic herbs. Then knead this mixture into a heap and make a hole in its centre.

Elsewhere, add garlic cloves, aromatic herbs, saffron strands and a pinch of salt into a mortar and then crush all ingredients into a paste. Add a little water to the resulting mixture and toss into the hole which has been made in the flour heap.

Place the dough into an oven tray and let rise for an hour and a half until doubled in size with the oven turned off. Let rise for a further 30 minutes. Remove the bread from the oven, which is still turned off, introduce a bowl of water and spray its walls. Preheat to 200ºC.

Make some cuts into the bread, sprinkle flour on its surface and place the bread into the over to bake for 40 minutes. Once cooked, leave to cool in the same oven container. When the bread is cool we can eat a delicious homemade bread, with a traditional flavour and the zest of saffron.