One Rise Bread in Cooker

I believe that breakfast should be the most healthy and nutritive meal of the day and gets really upset when I can’t feed a good healthy breakfast to my family. Generally I make sandwiches or bread omlette (for hubby) or idli/dosa on weekdays for our breakfast. On weekends, it would be some elaborate

puttu-kadala or idiyappam–stew or poori-bhaji or aappam–eggcurry etc. When I make idli/dosa batter in my grinder it lasts for around a week. I don’t add salt to the entire batter. I grind and refrigerate it and ferment only the required amount. So that way my batter stays fresh for a week or so.

But some days I get too lazy to make the batter and then I end up wondering what to make for our weekday breakfast. As such weekday mornings are quite busy with dabba making and so on. So, my breads are my only saviour. Yesterday since morning I thought of soaking rice and udad dal for making idli batter, but somehow forgot it. Actually I was busy stitching a ghagra-choli for my little niece (as Dassera is approaching). Then evening, I went and bought veggies and there forgot to bake a bread either. So after my dinner was ready at around 7 pm, I remembered that I haven’t made any arrangements for next day’s breakfast. So thought of making a quick one rise bread.

This bread unlike other breads doesn’t have a first rise where we wait for the dough to double in size, then knock off and shape and proof again and then bake. Simply knead the dough well, give it a small ten minutes rest, knock off, shape and allow it to rise fully and then bake. Another thing that I have been wanting to do since long was to try a bread in cooker, that is without using my oven. And yes! It worked !! This bread has a good golden crust, is extremely soft and look at the colour on the sides. Aren’t they beautiful? Only problem that I felt is it took longer than my oven and a part of the lid touched the top of my bread, creating an ugly dent 🙁

I should have kept a short cake tin or a steel coaster inside the cooker. Then my bread would have had a better top. Anyways, lesson learnt for the day. I was anxiously awaiting for morning to slice my bread and just look at the texture!! I should say that I am pretty happy to see such a soft bread. Incase you try it, please share your feedback on the blog or email me at pradeepa.nair0@gmail.com

As always the cup used is 240 ml.

Ingredients:

• Whole wheat flour 200gm (~11/2 cup)
• All purpose flour 100gm (~3/4 cup)
• Salt to taste
• Sugar 1 tsp
• Instant yeast 1 tsp
• Fresh cream 3 tbsp
• Milk 120 ml (1/2 cup)
• Water ~ 150 ml (1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp)
• Butter 1 tbsp

Method:

• Mix both the flours, salt, sugar and instant yeast in a big mixing bowl.
• Add milk and water and heat it till it’s lukewarm. Now add the fresh cream to it and mix well.
• Pour this liquid into the dry ingredients and start kneading. You might require either the entire liquid or at times slightly lesser or more depending on the temperature and weather conditions of your place. So please do not add the entire liquid ingredients in one go.
• Start kneading it like you knead any bread dough using the stretch and fold method. If the dough appears too dry sprinkle some water or wet your hands and knead. If the dough is very watery, sprinkle upto 1 or 2 spoons of flour and knead.
• Knead for around 10-12 minutes till the dough is very very soft, elastic and bouncy. It should be much more softer than your usual chapati dough.
• Place the dough in a well oiled bowl and cover with a wet muslin cloth. Give it a rest of just 10 minutes.

• Meanwhile grease a small bread tin with butter and keep it ready. I have used a 7 by 3 inches aluminium bread tin.
• After 10 minutes, take the dough and knead for a minute. Now roll it into a rectangle either using a rolling pin or flatten with your hand.
• Roll it tightly into a log with length equal to the length of the tin.
• Place the shaped log into the bread tin and press the top to fill the tin fully.

• Apply some oil or butter or milk on top to avoid the top from drying out.
• Cover the tin with a big lid or keep the tin in a big plastic wrap and allow it to rise around 1/2 to 1 inch above the rim of the tin. This took around 35 minutes for me yesterday.

• While the bread is rising, take your pressure cooker and remove the gasket and whistle and heat it on high flame for around 10 minutes.
• Place a big cookie cutter ring or invert a cake tin or some vessel inside the cooker. This ensures that the bread tin doesn’t touch the base of the cooker and doesn’t get too much heat.
• When the bread has risen to the expected level, place it slowly on the inverted cake tin or ring inside the cooker. Close the lid and start baking.
• After around 20 minutes, open the lid and see. (When I opened the lid, I realised that the inside part of the lid had touched the top of the bread and made a small hole in the centre of the bread. I slowly took the bread tin and the inverted cake tin out and kept a pie mould ring (which was shorter than my earlier cake tin). Now kept the bread tin again inside the cooker).
• Reduce the flame to medium and continue baking. After 30-35 minutes, open and have a look at your bread. Apply some milk wash or butter wash and bake for some more time. It took me almost 55-60 minutes to get a good golden colour on my bread.
• Switch off the flame and slowly take the tin out of the cooker.

• Wait for 2-3 minutes and slowly transfer the bread onto a cooling rack.

• Apply some butter on top and cool completely. Wait for atleast 2-3 hours before you slice your bread.
• Slice and enjoy.