Recipe: Garlic herb and courgettes bread

Ingredients

500g plain flour
5g dried yeast granules
½ tbsp salt
½ tbsp sugar
325ml water at room temperature
½ tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
⅓ cup chopped continental parsley
⅓ cup chopped basil
¼ cup chopped rosemary leaves
1 tbsp butter
100g grated courgettes

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, salt, sugar and bread together in a large bowl. Add half of the water to the dry ingredients and then mix, slowly adding the remaining water whilst mixing.

2. Add the olive oil to the ball of dough and knead it in. If necessary, add extra flour if it becomes too sticky and continue working dough.

3. The kneading is important as it is a necessary technique to ensure the dough will rise and be fluffy. Knead the dough until the texture is smooth and elastic.

4. Return the dough to the bowl, cover it with cling wrap and then a tea towel and keep warm until the mixture doubles in size – this can take 1-1.5 hours.

5. When risen, knock the dough back in the bowl and then take it out. Cut it in half and roll each half out to a large rectangle about 50cm x 25cm, then trim the edges to straighten.

6. Spread the top of each with ½ butter then scatter the crushed garlic, herb mixture and grated courgettes over both rectangles.

7. Cut each rectangle into strips, to the height of your loaf tins, with a very sharp knife and lay the strips on top of each. Cut the layered strips into squares the width of your tins.

8. Grease or line your loaf tins, and then stack the squares on top of each other.

9. Turn the stack on its side and place them into the tins (don’t worry if your dough doesn’t reach the edge of the tins, the dough will rise again with the final proof).

10. Cover the tins in cling wrap and set aside for 30 minutes. At this stage, if you want to freeze the loaves you can.

11. Preheat oven to 190°C. Remove the cling wrap from the loaf tins and bake in the oven for 55 minutes until the tops are golden.

12. Remove from pan and let it rest for 10 minutes before removing from the tin and serving warm.

Recipe supplied by The Forum Company

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