Name: Easy to make Bloomer Bread Loaf
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 240 min
Ingredients: 500 g Strong white bread flour; 7 g Fast action dried yeast ((usually one sachet of fast action bread yeast)); 10 g Salt; 320 ml Water; 40 ml Olive oil ((I use extra virgin in this recipe))

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The ingredients to make a bloomer load of bread

Pouring water into flour to make a bloomer load of bread

Kneeding dough by hand to make a bloomer load of bread

Kneaded bloomer loaf dough ready to prove

Bloomer loaf dough after doubling in size

Knocking back the air in the dough to make a bloomer loaf

Freshly baked bloomer loaf of bread cooling on a wire rack

If you have never made bread before then this should be your go-to recipe. This easy to make bloomer bread loaf is ever so simple. You mix it by hand, it is easily kneaded and doesn’t require a bread tin so what’s your excuse? Try it today and get that awesome fresh baking bread smell going in your kitchen.

Make it enough times following the pictures below and you won’t even need this recipe again. You can make it all from memory! Don’t believe me? Make it every weekend for 3 weeks and by week 4 you will just be reaching for the ingredients and getting on with it.

This bloomer loaf gets its name from the way the dough expands. Before and then during baking, it “blooms” to give its characteristic shape with its four diagonal slashes on the top.

It’s not a complicated or hard bread to make. It is not a wet dough that is difficult to handle. You don’t need a mixer or even bread tin. And it gets its lovely texture and taste from the double rising process and its crusty surface. And like all freshly baking bread, it smells amazing in the oven!

Serve with fresh cheese, ham or some cherry tomatoes. Or toast it up for poached egg on toast with mashed avocado, your options are endless. Easy to make bloomer bread is your go-to bread!

Freshly baked bloomer bread loaf sliced and ready to eat

Easy to make Bloomer Bread Loaf

Try this really easy recipe for a freshly made English white bloomer loaf

Course Side Dish

Cuisine British

Keyword bloomer, Bread, loaf, white loaf

Prep Time 25

Cook Time 35

Proving time 3

Total Time 4

Ingredients

500 g Strong white bread flour
7 g Fast action dried yeast (usually one sachet of fast action bread yeast)
10 g Salt
320 ml Water
40 ml Olive oil (I use extra virgin in this recipe)

Instructions

Add your bread flour into a large bowl, and then add the yeast to one side and the salt to the other side.
Make a well in the centre and pour in the olive oil.
Slowly pour in the water and start to mix the ingredients with your hand and bring them all together. Gather all the flour up and keep adding the water bit by bit and keep mixing.
Your dough should be soft and a little sticky, but not soggy and wet, so you may not need to use all of your water.
Splash some oil onto your work surface run your fingers over it and tip the dough ball out onto the surface ready for kneading.
Knead firmly for 10 minutes pushing the palms of your hands into the dough and folding the dough over and repeating.
Oil a bowl with your fingers or some kitchen roll, place the dough into the bowl, cover with cling film and leave for 2 hours or until tripled in size.
Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and "knock back" by pushing the air out with your knuckles and then folding the dough over and repeating a couple of times.
Shape into the classic bloomer shape, then place onto a lightly floured baking sheet on top of a baking tray.
Place the whole tray into a plastic bag, (use a tall sauce bottle to stop the bag touching the dough) and leave for another hour for its second rise.
With a very sharp knife cut 4 diagonal slashes across the surface of the dough so it can expand when baking.
Put in a preheated oven at 220°C for 25 minutes and then turn down to 200°C for another 10 minutes.

Notes

How to get a really crusty loaf on this easy to make bloomer bread loaf?

When you turn the oven on put a baking tray at the bottom of the oven. Just before you put your dough in to bake, pour in 750ml of water into the hot baking tray. This creates steam in the oven while your bloomer bakes giving it a nice crust.

Don’t forget the slashes but use a really sharp knife

If you don’t create the diagonal slashes on the top of the bloomer dough, when the dough “blooms” in the oven, it will crack around the bottom instead as it expands.

Try something different

Why not try the bread with a sprinkle of chia seeds, or sesame seeds over the dough before it goes in the oven.