This week, I'm beginning a bready build-up. To mark the Real Bread Campaign's Real Bread Maker Week (11-17 May), Ithought I'd celebrate some of the loaves, buns and baked items that Irely on as "bread" in the broadest sense. Next week, I'll look at treats made with yeasty doughs, and the week after I'll bring you my all-time favourite family bread – homemade, wild-yeasted sourdough – but I'm going to start at the other end of the scale, with some of the simplest breads, made without yeast.
Two of today's recipes are wheat-free as well, and some might argue those aren't breads at all, but we should take the word "bread" in a broad, generous and historical sense. The simplest bread is a paste of flour (of whatever grain you have gathered) and water, cooked by whatever means is at your disposal: a flat cake slapped on a hot stone, or a paste rolled around a stick and held over a fire (aka a damper). Even porridge is arguably a kind of wet bread, while oatcakes (another of today's recipes) are a dry, crisp bread that predates any kind of "biscuit" by centuries). Bread is whatever starchy stalwart you turn to when your belly needs filling and your stew, sauce or soup needs bolstering and mopping. It doesn't matter what grain it's made from, or by which method it's held together in the heat – it's still cornerstone stuff.
As it happens, bread has a bit of a bad rap these days. One reason for that is that we simply eat far too much of it – it is, unfortunately, just so bloody convenient, slotting so easily into our mouths (or toasters) aswe rush from one thing to another. I agree we're eating too much, particularly of the factory-made, pre-sliced kind. It may seem odd to preface a series of columns about bread with a suggestion to eat less of it, but that's one of the keys to enjoying it more. It's a bit like meat in that respect: you needn't have it at every meal – in fact, you needn't have it every day – but when you do, make sure it's good stuff. You'll enjoy it more and your body will use the energy from it with less complaint.
The best way to ensure your bread is worthy of you is, of course, to make it yourself. And if you want to do that quickly, non-yeasted breads are the place to start. Now, if for whatever reason you're not eating yeast or wheat, I think it's a mistake to try to mimic the classic baker's loaf. Yeast is a raising agent that knows no equal, capable of producing a profusion of froth and bubbles that, when trapped within a dough, produce a unique texture. Wheat, meanwhile – or, more specifically, the gluten within it – is one of the stretchiest, bounciest substances known to the cook, capable of holding those bubbles like nothing else. Put the two together, and you get very good, well-leavened, nicely chewy bread. You can't replicate that without those ingredients, so don't even try. Aim, instead, for something with different charms, achieved in a different way.
Non-yeasted breads either use alternative raising agents (such as bicarbonate of soda or baking powder, as in soda bread or this week's cornbread), or are forms of unleavened bread, or flatbread (as in oatcakes and tortillas). They all have their own wonderful qualities, not least of which is that they're so easy and quick to make – one thing you emphatically cannot say about conventional bread. You can usually serve a non-yeast bread within minutes of it being baked, too – again, not true of a yeasted loaf, which needs time to cool and settle.
When it comes to satisfaction, though, quick breads are off the scale. Feeding people you love with something you've cooked yourself is always pleasing, but bready things are elemental, and the love runs just a little deeper. Present family or friends with a plate of slightly charred, smoky-smelling soft tortillas, or a pan of fragrant, golden cornbread, or toasty, nutty, crumbly oatcakes, and you can feel the warmth spreading around the table.
Chilli cheese cornbread
Simply baked like a kind of savoury cake, cornbread is lovely with soupsand stews. Leave out the onion, chilli and cheese for plain cornbread, which is delicious sliced and fried in bacon fat as part of a fried breakfast. Serves six to eight.
A little butter for greasing
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 medium-hot red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
250g fine cornmeal or maize meal
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp fine salt
75g strong cheddar, grated
100ml plain whole-milk yoghurt
200ml whole milk
Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6 and butter a 1.5-litre oven dish. Heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat, add the onion and chilli, and fry for 10-12 minutes, until soft and golden. Set aside to cool.
Mix the cornmeal, baking powder, bicarb and salt, then stir in the cheese and the cooked onion and chilli. Whisk together the milk and yoghurt, and stir into the mix until well combined. Pour into the tin and bake for 25 minutes, until firm and golden on top. Leave to cool a little, and serve while still warm.
Oatcakes
Made purely with oatmeal (which is wheat- but not gluten-free), these are quite delicate, but have an incomparable toasty, oaty flavour. They're great with cheese, hummus or just butter. They're also amazing with marmalade or raspberry jam. Makes around 16 7.5cm oatcakes
50g butter
Water
150g fine oatmeal, plus a little more for rolling
150g medium oatmeal
½ tsp fine salt
Put the butter in a small saucepan with four tablespoons of water and heat until simmering.
Combine the oatmeals and salt in a bowl, pour in the hot buttery water and, working quickly, mix to a dough. Still working quickly and while it's warm, sprinkle a little fine oatmeal on a work surface and roll out the dough. I like it about 3-4mm thick, but if it's a touch thicker, no matter. Use a cookie cutter to stamp out discs of the dough. You can try to reroll the scraps, but they will become crumbly as they cool, so it's best to maximise your cutting-out the first time around. (I often cook the trimmings of the first cutting alongside the oatcakes, in whatever quirky shapes they have formed.)
Heat a nonstick frying pan over a medium heat. Cook the oatcakes in the hot pan in batches, for eight to 10 minutes, turning them carefully with a pallete knife once or twice. When done, they should be pale and firm with just the barest hint of golden colour in places. Leave to cool on a wire rack, and store in an airtight container for up to a week.
Spelt tortillas
Spelt is an ancient form of wheat, and is not gluten-free, but for some of us it does seem be be easier to digest than conventional modern wheat. It's certainly a grain I turn to often, and I love white spelt flour in tortillas. These are the simplest of breads, just a kind of griddled pancake, but they taste amazing – asgood as any yeasted flatbread or pitta, but made in a fraction of the time. The key is to get the frying pan hot, so the tortillas are lightly charred and patched with colour, and take on a fabulous smoky character. Makes four large tortillas.
250g white spelt flour, plus extra fordusting
5g fine salt
1 tbsp olive oil
Water
Put the flour and salt in a bowl andmix well. Add the oil, then graduallymix in about 150ml water, combining the ingredients with the fingertips of one hand while you pour in the water with the other, until you have a fairly stiff, rough dough. Tip on to a floured surface and knead lightly for a couple of minutes, until you have a smooth ball of dough. Put this back in the bowl, cover with clingfilm and leaveto rest for 30 minutes.
Put a nonstick frying pan on to heat over a high heat. Cut the dough into four equal pieces. Using a little more flour to prevent sticking, roll one piece of dough out to a thin circle (you needn't be too exact about the shape) about 20cm in diameter and just 2-3mm thick. Place this in the hot pan and cook for about two minutes on each side, until slightly puffed up and nicely patched with brown. Remove and wrap loosely in a clean tea towel – this traps the steam and keeps the tortilla soft. Repeat with the remaining dough.
The tortillas are best eaten straight away, but they will keep fora few hours if wrapped in foil, and warmed in a low oven beforeserving.
