Fresh herbs, spices and seeds flavour these super easy tear and share bread rolls. Great for picnics, family gatherings or just a simple bowl of soup!

I recently wrote about how donuts are my kryptonite.  I should clarify that to bread products genreally are my actual weakness.  It really doesn’t matter if they’re deep fried and drenched in sugar.  Or stuffed to the gunnels with herbs, garlic, cheese and seeds before being shaped and baked into tear and share bread rolls.  Bread is my jam.  Ohhh bread and jam how I love thee.

Anyhoo …

It’s currently Bread Week on the one and only Great British Bake Off so of course any excuse to make some sort of bready thing.  If you’ve never had a go at making your own bread then there’s no time like the present:

• It’s not as hard as you probably think.
• You can legitimately put your feet up for a couple of hours while it proves because you’ve had a good work out doing all that kneading.
• The smell.  Oh the smell.
• And you get fresh home-made bread at the end of it all.

So let’s start with how making bread isn’t as difficult as you might think.

For a full break down try this How to Make Bread guide – I’ve gone into more detail than you probably need but it’s there if you’re interested!

There’s just a few simple steps to making yeast risen bread and a couple of ‘rules’.  Yeast likes just a couple of things to do ITS thing – food and warmth.  The food comes from the small amount of sugar and the warmth comes from gently heating the liquid before adding the yeast.  When heating the liquid it only takes just a few seconds.  You want ‘blood temperature’ – this means that when you put your finger in the liquid you can’t tell if it’s hot or cold!  Too hot and you can end up killing the yeast – all that kneading for nothing *very sad face*

Once you’ve made your dough, the warmer your ambient temperature the quicker your dough will prove.  If you’re lucky enough to have a bread proving setting on your oven it’s a great way to speed up the process.  Airing cupboards (do people still have those?!) also work a treat, as does a sunny windowsill.

You want to leave the dough long enough for it to roughly double in size.

This allows the yeast and dough to ferment or leaven, giving bread its wonderful flavour and texture.  Knocking back a risen dough and a second prove once you’ve shaped any yeast based bread dough allows the small air pockets to form.

For these tear and share bread rolls we make the basic dough, prove and then knock back before adding all our flavours and shaping into their final shape before baking.  I wanted flavours that would not only stand apart but also compliment each other.

Once you’ve knocked back the dough, separate it into 3 equal pieces and add all the goodies:

1. Garlic, parsley and vegan parmesan
2. Dried apricot and walnuts
3. Sesame seeds and poppy seeds

I’ve used garlic powder for this recipe as it’s easier to incorporate and has a slightly less pungent flavour than fresh garlic but if you’re a real garlic lover (and possibly live alone with no chance of seeing anyone for a day or two!) feel free to use fresh crushed garlic 😉

Divide your 3 flavoured large rolls into 6 smaller ones and place fairly close together on your baking tray.  In hindsight I could probably put mine even closer together to get that close structure of a good tear and share bread!

Once baked try your best to give them 5 minutes to cool slightly before devouring.  I had Phil help me the day I made these (always a mistake as he has ZERO patience when he’s hungry) and we just sat on the floor chomping away, Meg drooling next to us once I’d finished photographing.  Living the glamorous life.

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