Making homemade granary bread is so much easier than you think! This Super Simple Granary Bread recipe uses just 5 ingredients, takes only 20 minutes hands on time, and does not require any special equipment – but it delivers delicious results every time!
Course Bread
Cuisine British
Prep Time 20 minutesminutes
Cook Time 30 minutesminutes
Proving Time 2 hourshours
Total Time 2 hourshours50 minutesminutes
Servings 12slices
Calories 164kcal
Author Eb Gargano
Equipment
1 large bowl
1 Wooden spoon
1 baking tray
1 knife
Ingredients
500ggranary bread flourAKA malted grain bread flour (see Note 1)
Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together thoroughly. Add the olive oil and mix again. Slowly add the water, stirring constantly. Mix until you have a dough. It will be a bit wet and sticky but it will get much smoother and less sticky after kneading.
Knead for 10 minutes: put the dough on a floured surface and stretch it away from you with the heel of your hand, fold it over, rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Kneading can look complicated, but basically it is just all about stretching the gluten in the dough, so just make sure you do lots of stretching and it will be good enough to make a nice loaf of bread.
Shape the dough into a ball and put it back in the bowl you used for mixing. Leave it to rise for 60 minutes at room temperature, covered lightly with a piece of oiled clingfilm.
After 60 minutes, take the dough out of the bowl, knock the air out of it and shape into an oval loaf shape. Put it on an oiled baking sheet and cover lightly with the same oiled clingfilm. Leave for another 60 minutes to prove.
After 45 minutes, preheat your oven to 210C / 190C fan and continue to prove for the remaining for 15 minutes.
After the full 60 minutes proving time is up, slash the top of the loaf a few times with a very sharp knife and sprinkle it with flour. Cook the bread in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, remove the loaf from the oven and check it's done by carefully turning it over (wearing oven gloves!) and tapping the bottom. If it's done, it will sound hollow. If it's not done, pop the loaf back in the oven for 5 more minutes and check again.
When it's done, place the cooked loaf onto a wire cooling rack (use your grill rack, if you don't have one!)
Notes
Make sure you use granary flour designed for making bread. This is usually sold as ‘granary bread flour’ or ‘malted grain bread flour’.
Salt is a very personal thing. Typically for a loaf this size you would use between 1 and 2 teaspoons (5-10g).
Suitable for freezing.
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.