Give us today our daily bread

My baking attempt - whole wheat bread spiced with onions,chillies garlic ginger ,basil and peppermint and a small amount of cottage cheese with some olive oil. We rarely make leavened bread at home and this was one of my forays !! I made it into a braid but the blessed thing really swelled up to occupy the whole tray !! It is tasty (though I would have added more chillies !!) It has a thick crust and being made of whole wheat is more like the "rustic" bread twhich I ate in Germany and Croatia - thick crust with a denser core but is tastier than the classical white "Wonder bread' and makes a good dipping bread with a hot soup !!

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1 1/2 cups warm water - actually needed a bit more if you are using whole wheat to allow it to become a workable dough.
3 tablespoons olive oil or peanut oil
1 1/4 tea spoon salt
3 1/2 cups wheat flour (I used whole wheat)
1 tea spoon of baking soda.
1 good packet of active yeast - I used dry yeast which I activated with 1/2 cup warm water and added a teaspoon of sugar.
Mix the activated yeast with the above ingredients and knead it into a dough. Put it into a food processor with a dough hook / blade and allow it to be processed till a "stringy " feel appears.(Good kneading is essential in the processor) Add one spoon garlic paste , one spoon ginger paste, one red onion- finely diced , one handful of coriander - finely chopped, a spoon of chopped basil leaves, one spoon of oregano and if available peppermint leaves. knead and form a tube and divide into 3 parts and braid it in a greased pan. Keep in a warm place for 60 minutes to allow the dough to rise.
Drizzle some olive oil mixed with garlic ginger paste and also chilly powder (if you like it spicy) and grind some pepper over it.
Bake at 190 Deg C for 45 minutes . Wait for 5 minutes to cool and flip it from the pan onto a grid to cool and in the meanwhile coat with a little olive oil.
You can knead into the bread some cottage cheese to make it extra rich. I used Paneer which is home made cottage cheese made by curdling milk and yoghurt and straining it and compacting it with a weight till all the whey runs out but a tub of cottage cheese would do.
Probable interesting additions could be Fennel seeds, Cinnamon,Nutmeg and Star Anise (1 tea spoon each and the last three finely powdered and added to the dough) which would make it more aromatic !!