Five seed bread is a staple in our house. I make it two loaves at a time so I don't feel too guilty about firing up the oven and then slice the loaves and freeze them. The recipe takes 5 minutes only and then around an hour to rise and another hour to cook.
The rising time is a guide, it totally depends on the day, on a cold day it will be slower and a hot day very quick, what you are looking for is that the bread doubles in size. If you have an airing cupboard that will be a good warm place to leave the bread to rise or simplest of all put a pan of boiling water in your oven and put the bread to rise in there.The steam and warmth from the pan of water will create a perfect warm place for your bread to rise, when I do this I can have the bread risen in about 50 minutes even on a cold winter day.
This recipe is genius, I know one friend who uses her Thermomix almost solely to make this bread. If you are thinking of what you can take to a friend for a house gift this may just be it, perhaps throw in some lemon curd which will take you 7 minutes or Strawberry Jam - 25 minutes.
I have a few tweaks I can suggest to the original recipe
1. LOAF TIN, if you don't have a good tin already go online to www.souschef.co.uk and order their 2lb Alan Silverman tin. It is perfect.
2. I also recommend a silicon liner, it just saves faffing around with baking paper. See this one (make sure it is the 2lb version) https://bakeoglide.kitchen/products/bake-o-glide-loaf-tin-one-liner?variant=395526242315
3. Use half and half strong wholemeal flour and strong white. All wholemeal makes a very dense loaf. I often increase the kneading time from 3 to 6 minutes.
4. Add 2 teaspoons of salt not the suggested 1 if like me you are a lover of well salted food.
5. Forget sprinkling seeds on top, they drive me mad, they all fall off and make a terrible mess.
6. Bake the loaf for a full 50 minutes, then remove it from the tin and return it to the oven for a further 10 minutes, I don't like their suggestion to leave the bread to cool in the tin. The recipe suggests a much narrower tin than mine and that is why I have to cook the bread for longer.
7. Allow the loaf to cool COMPLETELY before being tempted to slice it.
8. This loaf will last well for days.
