My husband is awesome. He got back from Texas on Thursday night (a long saga of delays and diversions which lead to me having to drive to SFO at midnight), and now my laptop is now back working again! Hurrah! It was a bit touch and go, I thought it might be beyond saving, which would have been super expensive…… but it is saved!

So……. while it was out of action I made some bread.

This bread is inspired by some delicious sourdough Raisin and Fennel bread that I used to buy from Hart’s Bakery. As we are now many thousands of miles away we can no longer pop down there of a saturday morning for some freshly squeezed orange juice and yummy goodies (mmmmmm Saturday bread!) I thought I would try and give it a go but I made mine with regular yeast, rather than a sourdough starter, as I haven’t started mine up again yet.

Raisin and Fennel Bread Recipe – adapted from Leiths Bakery Bible

Ingredients

340g/ 120z strong white flour

8g/ 1/4oz fast action yeast

2 tsp caster sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp fennel seeds (NB I like the fennel flavour to be quite strong in this, but you could scale this back to 1tbsp if you like)

2 tbsp oil

200ml/ 7 floz lukewarm water

100g/ 3 1/2oz raisins

Method

Combine the flour, yeast, sugar, salt and fennel seeds in a bowl. Add the oil and water and combine to make a dough.

Knead by hand for 10 minutes, or machine for 6 minutes, until the dough is smooth. Place the dough in a bowl, cover, and leave to rise until doubled in size, about an hour.

Knock back the dough, then knead the raisins into the dough so that they are evenly dispersed. Shape into a loaf and place on a greased baking tray and leave to prove until 1 1/2 times size, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 220C/425F.

When risen, place the loaf in the oven, and reduce the temperature to 200C/400F, and bake for 30 minutes, or until golden brown and sounding hollow when tapped underneath.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Delish! Also, I feel my loaves are starting to improve in appearance, what a good looking thing that is!