Since I've been in an allergy ridden haze, I went to the library to borrow some movies to watch inside. The best find was the set of Oliver's Twist dvds. I watched all of the episodes and knew that I had to make something from that old Jamie Oliver cookbook I got ages ago when I worked at Esquire. Bread kneading is good upper arm exercise as is walking home with heavy groceries, so I skipped working out and instead bought a 5 lb bag of bread flour (2.49), 1 lb of semolina flour (2.49) and three packets of yeast (2.29) from Fairway. The Red Star active dried yeast package says that approximately 2 1/4 tsp equals one 1/4 oz packet of Red Star. Three 1/4 oz packets equal the activity of one 2 oz yeast cake. This confused me. Jamie's recipe for basic bread calls for 1 oz fresh yeast or 3/4 oz active dried yeast. So if one packet is 1/4 oz, does three packets equal 3/4 oz or since three packets equals 2 oz, should I just use one packet and then split a second in half?
I didn't know what to do, so I just used 2 packets. Then the other part that worried me is that Jamie says use just over 2 cups of tepid water. To the uneducated me, tepid means warm water, but the internet says that tepid is two parts cold water to one part boiling water. The 2 cups part was easy, but then I ended up needing more water because the first kneading resulted in a very dry crumbly dough. Jamie says not to get scared and to add more water, but I ended up adding another cup warm from the tap. It still seemed too dry, but then I didn't want it to wet. I'm not sure why because Jamie even says that it's a moist dough. I lost my confidence, even thought Jamie says in stage 8 not to lose it.
But hey! The bread turned out fine. I ended up making two loaves as there was a ton of dough, next time I'll freeze one ball of dough straight away for baking later.
Here's the recipe. Oh man. I just read the online recipe and the amounts are smaller than the book's measurements. Oh right. This internet version is from his first tv show, The Naked Chef. As is my book. Interesting that it differs, but the book calls for 1 lb of durum semolina flour in addition to the 1 lb of bread flour. Oh and it calls for 3 packets of the active dry yeast! Well, like I said the bread was fine. Now that I think about it, it might be considered a bit dense, but like my bread, so am I!