I find it interesting that since I started blogging in 2015, I don’t have a recipe on the blog for Agege bread. Weird right. I have for PaniPopo bread rolls which I absolutely love,you should check the recipe out.

An egbon of mine DM’ed me a few days ago to send her the recipe for Agege bread, that is when I realised I didn’t have it here on the blog. Waawu. I found a picture from 2014 on the Facebook page though.

I’ve dusted my recipe book, typed out the recipe and added a few tips I learnt in the last one year. Like my recipe book contains some bread improvers that I’ve never gelled with, so removed those. Using Vitamin C is a tip I learnt and I’ve explained what it’s used for in the recipe.

Recipe

• 6 cups all purpose flour (you’d need some more to powder the rolling board, about a cup at least).
• 1 1/2 tbsp yeast
• 1/2 cup sugar (you can half this, I’m a sweet tooth)
• 1 cup water
• 1  cup milk
• 100g – 150g margarine (Can be substituted with 2-3 tbsp of vegetable oil)
• 2 large egg (one for dough, one for egg washing)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ascorbic acid ( I crushed 5 tables of white vitamin C to get this). Vitamin C acts as dough improver. It accelerates the rising of the dough and extends the shelf life.

Procedure

• Sift flour in a large bowl, add sugar, salt, and vitamin c and whisk together. Add the margarine and rub into into the flour till it forms crumbs
• *Check that your yeast is active. Sometime you buy packet yeast and you may not know it has been exposed and is now not as potent. To do this, add a 1/4 tsp sugar to your yeast, add 3 tbsp of warm water. Leave it for about 3 minutes. The yeast is expected to froth if it is still active, if it doesn’t froth like the foamy top on beer after leaving it for longer than 10 minutes, the yeast is not active
• In another bowl, mix wet ingredients, one egg, milk water and whisk together
• Make a hole in the centre of the dry ingredients and add yeast, the mixed wet ingredients to make a dough.You can use a mixer or mix by hand.
• Transfer the dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Or keep mixing in your mixer until dough is stretchy and elastic. The key to making great Agege bread is in the kneading. Kneading will activate the gluten that will make the bread stretchy
• Roll the dough up. Grease a bowl and place the dough in it. Cover and put in a warm place to rise until it doubled. I usually turn the oven on briefly to warm it up and turn off. Then I place the dough inside to rise, takes about an hour for the first rise.
• When it has risen, deflate the dough and place on a floured surface knead the dough very well, this will knock out all the air from the first rising and will make the dough fluffier and more elastic
• Divide it into two, roll the dough up to form a loaf and place in a greased baking pan. For this, I placed both rolls, side by side in the same pan
• Cover with damp kitchen towel and place in a warm place to rise the second time.
• When it has risen, turn the oven on and set to 350 degrees. If your oven doesn’t come with a temperature gauge set the heat to about three notches below the highest.
• Whisk the extra egg you set aside together. Using a brush, Egg wash the top of the risen dough before you place the dough into the oven. Bake for about 30 minutes. About 15 minutes into the bake, you can pull the bread out to give it one more egg wash. If you don’t want the top crust too dark, don’t egg wash.
• Alternatives to egg wash. You can brush with milk or margarine.
• You can pass a skewer through the bread to know if it is ready or tap the top to hear a hollow sound.
• Once it is ready, take it out of the oven, remove from the pan and set on a wire rack to cool.

I can think of so many ways you can enjoy bread. How do you like yours?

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