Sustain / Real Bread Campaign / Recipes
Brown bread
Mark Woods’s tasty, moist overnight loaf.
A supermarket ‘brown bread’ label doesn’t tell you much, other than it ain’t wholemeal, but it ain’t white, either. The bran and wheat germ content could be minimal and it might be coloured with caramel to give it a more pleasing or apparently wholesome appearance.
Mark keeps it real with an honest loaf that can be part of a healthier diet, and also a stepping stone to wholemeal for some people. The pre-ferment and slow proving helps to develop flavour and a moist, chewy (rather than dry and crumbly) texture.
Ingredients
Makes 1 large or 2 small loaves
For the pre-ferment
250g/9oz/1¾ cups white bread flour
350g/12oz/1½ cups warm water
2g/scant ½ tsp fresh yeast
For the dough
100g/3½oz/¾ cup minus ½ tbsp white bread flour
150g/5½oz/about 1 cup wholemeal/wholewheat bread flour
5g/1tsp fresh yeast
5g / 1tsp fine/table salt
butter or oil, for greasing (optional)
Method
1. Mix the pre-ferment ingredients together thoroughly until you have a sloppy batter. Cover and leave in the refrigerator for 8–12 hours or overnight.
2. Add the dough ingredients to the pre-ferment and mix until there are no dry patches of flour, then knead the dough until smooth and stretchy. Cover and leave to rise at room temperature for about 2 hours, giving the dough a fold after the first 20, 40 and 60 minutes.
3. Grease a 1kg/2lb loaf pan (or two 500g/1lb pans for small loaves) or dust a large proving basket with flour. Shape the dough to fit and place it seam-side down in the pan or seam-side up in the basket. Cover and leave to rise at room temperature for a further 2 hours.
Heat the oven to 240°C/220°C fan/475°F/gas 8–9 with a baking stone or baking sheet in place if you are letting the dough rise in a basket.
4. Either place the loaf pan in the oven, or carefully turn the dough out of the proving basket onto a well-floured peel and slide it onto the baking stone. Bake for about 45 minutes, then turn out on a wire rack to cool before slicing.
About the baker
Mark Woods is a psychiatric nurse by day. In his free time, he runs the Slow Loaf microbakery and baking school in the West Midlands town of Walsall. He says, “We are losing so much in our fast-paced world. I am passionate about passing on my bread skills to anyone that will listen, teaching as many classes as possible throughout the year.”
Recipe text © 2016 Mark Woods.
Taken from Slow Dough: Real Bread by Chris Young, published by Nourish Books.
Reproduction prohibited without written agreement of the copyright holder.
Social sharing
If you make this, please share your photo(s) with the world on social media using #RealBread and other relevant hashtags, linking back to this recipe. Better still if we can see you in the photo, too: #WeAreRealBread!
Please don't forget to tag @RealBreadCampaign, and the recipe's author, on social media.
Published Wednesday 8 January 2025
Real Bread Campaign: The Real Bread Campaign finds and shares ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Whether your interest is local food, community-focussed small enterprises, honest labelling, therapeutic baking, or simply tasty toast, everyone is invited to become a Campaign supporter.
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