Make your own toast bread – soft, buttery, just like from the baker

Put the flour, the yeast, the sugar and the milk into the Mixing bowl of your food processor. Mix everything for 3 minutes on setting 1 until you get an even, still coarse dough mass.

This first step isn't about developing the dough yet – you just want to combine the basic ingredients and dissolve the yeast nicely in the milk. Everything else comes right after.

Now the soft butter goes in. Knead for another 3 minutes on setting 1 until it is fully worked in – it is the reason for the tender, buttery texture of your toast bread. Then add the salt and keep kneading for 10 minutes on setting 2 until the dough is smooth, supple and elastic.

Why the salt only at the end? Because it slows down the yeast and affects the gluten structure. If you add it too early, the dough works more slowly and becomes less elastic.

And how do you know it's kneaded enough? By the windowpane test. Take a walnut-sized piece of dough and gently stretch it between your fingers in all directions. If it can be stretched out paper-thin without tearing, and the light shines through the dough membrane, the gluten structure is perfect. If the dough tears too soon, keep kneading for another 2 to 3 minutes and try again.

Once the dough is ready, shape it into a ball. Put a little oil into a Bowl and spread it all around, then place the dough inside. This keeps it supple and makes it easy to lift out again after the resting time.

Cover the Bowl and let the dough rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. During this first proof – the bulk fermentation – it develops its flavour and visibly starts to rise. This is the time when you can calmly get the Baking tin ready and set the table.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and shape it into an elongated rectangle: press the edges from the outside towards the middle and then roll the dough up evenly.

Make sure the shaped dough is roughly the same length as your Baking tin. That way it can later be laid in neatly, with no folds that would show up as hollow pockets in the finished loaf.

Spray the Baking tin generously all over with Non-stick spray – base, sides, corners and the lid too. The spray ensures the bread comes cleanly out of the tin after baking. If you don't have spray, grease the tin with soft butter and dust it thinly with flour.

Then lay the shaped dough into the tin and press it firmly into all the corners with your hands and fingers. This step determines the shape: only if the dough is evenly distributed and sits in the corners will it fill the tin completely as it rises – and that's exactly where the typical square slice comes from.

Cover the Baking tin with a plastic pastry cloth – not with the lid! The cloth protects the dough from drying out without hindering it as it rises. The lid would slow it down at this point.

Let the dough rise for 40 to 60 minutes in a warm, draught-free spot. It should rise visibly and come up to about 1 cm below the rim of the tin. Towards the end of this time, preheat the oven to 200 °C fan.

As soon as the dough has reached the right height, remove the pastry cloth and close the tin with its lid. Then into the preheated oven.

Bake the toast loaf at 200 °C fan for 40 minutes. After 30 minutes, open the lid and let it finish baking uncovered for the last 10 minutes – this gives the surface its fine golden-brown colour and the typical crust.

And now comes the step where many people ruin it: take the loaf out of the tin **immediately**. If it stays inside, condensation forms, the edges bulge and the loaf turns rubbery. Onto a Cake rack with it and let it cool completely.

I know the waiting is hard when it smells so good. But only a fully cooled toast loaf can be cut cleanly into even slices – and toasted it tastes best anyway.