Bread no 3 - Almond Bread


This bread is just divine and I need to do it again VERY soon! It is from Paul Hollywood's book and I tried to follow his recipe this time. But I know that I will need to adjust baking time and temperature for my oven and not to follow his instructions next time. 
The bread bakes and browns very quickly, so it needs checking all the time. I have a gas oven with a fire that may burn my creations on one side while they are still not properly cooked on the other. Still have to learn how to use it because I always had before an electric oven and, unless I left something for several hours in it, I never got to taste home-baked carbon! This time on one side I got a bit black shade, I must admit, but even Julia Child used to say, that if no one see your kitchen disaster then it does not exist :-D
And the bread tastes so good... yum, yum, yum!
The bread is apparently from Cyprus, as many breads from "100 Great Breads" book :-)

Ingredients:
500g strong bread flour;
75g ground almonds;
10g salt [I used half of it];
60g caster [fine] sugar;
40g softened butter;
20g fresh yeast [or 2x 7g bags of dried yeast];
300ml milk & water mix [any proportions; I used about 200ml of milk and then washed the glass with some water];
125g flaked almonds

1. Put flour, salt, sugar, butter, ground almonds and yeast into a bowl. Add milk with water and mix together until combined.
2. Tip it out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough becomes soft and pliable [about 5 minutes]. Leave it in a bowl to rise for about 1 hour [3 hours in my case, because our house is quite cool during winter]. It needs to be twice as big.
3. Line a baking tray. Tip the dough out onto lightly floured surface with scattered half of the flaked almonds on it. Incorporate almonds into the dough [quickly, 1 minute or so]. 
4. Flatten the dough into oval shape [or any you like] and cover outside with the remaining almonds.
Place on the baking tray and leave it for about 1-2 hours. 



5. And now the crucial moment. In the book stays like this: Preheat the oven to 220C and bake it for 20-25 minutes. For me that did not work and the time and the temperature needed to be adjusted. As I said before - it has the tendency to burn quickly, because of the fatty almonds outside, and because it is a huge bread!  If , like me, you have a small oven, you can divide it into two loaves and then it will bake more evenly and quicker. 
With one big loaf  I would suggest to start with 220C for about 10 minutes to get hard and brown skin and then for about 20-25 in 180C to get the insides baked as well. In any case, after baking, transfer the beauty to wire rack to cool.



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