Rice Bread

Serves: n/a
Approx cost: €1
Approx calories (per slice): ~80 (assuming yield of ~20 slices)
Approx preparation and cooking time: 4 hours

This is something my wife has been making recently and I’m completely sold on it. Rice in bread didn’t strike me as entirely normal (indeed, I thought it sounded very bizarre), but then I tried it and it’s incredible. Unless you look really closely, under a good light, you don’t notice the rice inside the bread at all, although you will see the crisped up grains in the crust occasionally. It yields an incredibly white, soft bread with a delicious flavour – again, you can’t taste the rice, a lovely crusty exterior, and best of all, if you’re watching the calories, it’s healthier than traditional bread because of the substitution of rice.

We didn’t try it with other types of rice yet – brown, whole-grain etc, although I’m sure it would be equally delicious. I’m intrigued as to what it would be like using black or red rice too, so that’s an experiment for another day. If you’re a big fan of bread, I urge you to grab any left-over rice – if you’re like me and over-order when getting take-out or even just prepare too much when cooking with rice – and go and bake up a batch of this right now! You won’t regret it 🙂

Ingredients

Ingredients you'll need for this dish

– 200g boiled or steamed White Rice
– 300 ml (0.3 litres) Warm Water
– 400g Plain Flour + extra for kneading
– 2 tsps instant dried Yeast
– 1 tsp Salt
– 2 tsps Oil (Sunflower, Olive, etc)

You’ll also need
– A suitably sized Loaf Tin

Instructions

1. Start by placing the rice into a large mixing bowl. Take the warm water – not too hot – and pour on top of the rice, stirring well to break up any clumps of rice. Add in the yeast and stir well.
   
   
   
   




2. Add half the flour – 200g – and mix well, before covering with a clean cloth and leaving in a warm place for an hour to start rising. After this time it should look a bit like this:
   
   
   
   
   




3. Add in the other half of the flour and the salt and mix well. Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead well for 10 minutes or so before returning to the bowl, covering, and leaving in a warm place again to rise for another hour.
   
   
   
   




4. After this time, remove the risen dough from the bowl and push the air out of it with your hand. Shape the dough into a loaf shape and place inside an oiled Loaf Tin. Once again, cover, and place in a warm place and allow to rise for another hour.
   
   
   
   




5. Uncover and brush the top of the loaf using the oil. You can alternatively use a milk or egg glaze if you prefer. Bake in a pre-heated oven at ~190 degrees Celsius (or slightly higher if your oven is not fan-assisted) for 45 minutes. After this time, turn out of the tin and tap the bottom of the loaf to check it’s done (it should sound hollow when tapped) and then wrap in a clean cloth and allow to cool. Enjoy hot with butter, or cool as part of an awesome sandwich!

Nom nom