Eight-strand plaited loaf

The benefit to having a 10 month old baby is that you are forced to get up early, even on the weekend, and therefore have the time to actually do something productive in the morning. We were up at 5.30AM and having got dressed, had breakfast, cleared up and done the washing by 8AM we decided to try a second GBBO technical challenge - the Eight-strand plaited loaf.

Again T and I went head to head. I think both of us could have kneaded to dough for longer but we did have the added difficultly of trying to entertain Milo at the same time. After 10 mins of kneading the dough was still very very sticky and we had to scape it off the table. The plaiting was great fun and surprisingly easy.

Here are pictures before and after baking. In each set mine is the top one.

T let the Facebook jury decide which one they liked best and I have to admit I was utterly defeated. However, in real life I definitely thought mine looked better :-)

They tasted amazing and were ready and still warm at lunch time. The great thing about this recipe is that is actually doesn't involve very much hands on time, so we were able to get lots done when the dough was proving, and the result is very impressive.