This super easy, fast Vogel’s-style seeded bread is one you HAVE to try. It takes less than 5 minutes to prep and you’ll be tucking into the best toast of your life in only an hour. No kneading, no waiting for it to rise. It couldn’t be easier.

Every Kiwi knows the joy of Vogel’s bread. There’s just something about that lovely, seed-stuffed, moist bread that is so deliciously comforting. It makes the best toast around and I bet you won’t be able to stop at one slice!

I grew up eating Vogels and since moving to the UK, it’s been one of the things I miss the most. But I’ve solved my own problem with this super easy, DELICIOUS Vogels-style bread recipe. It’s a riff on one I learned from the wonderful Annabel Langbein. She calls her version ‘busy people’s bread’ which I completely agree with.

The magic of this bread is that it does its first rise in the oven at a low temperature, so you can literally mix the dough, pop it in the oven and let it do its thing. No kneading, no waiting around for it to rise. It couldn’t be easier. It also keeps really well – it will be fresh for at least 3 days – and freezes wonderfully. Just slice before freezing and storing in zip lock bags, then you can quickly defrost in the toaster!

All you have to do is mix your ingredients into a wet dough, pour it into a lined loaf tin and throw it in the oven.

Ingredients

This is a recipe you can play around with a little, depending on what you have in your cupboard, but everything you need should be easy to find at a regular store.

• White bread flour. This is what gives the bread the strength and structure it needs with all the seeds, so you do need it for this recipe.
• Wholemeal flour. If you don’t have wholemeal, you can just use all plain bread flour, or play around with different grains. Spelt or rye would also be lovely here.
• Seeds. I’m using a mix of pumpkin and sunflower seeds (and some sesame seeds for the top) but you can play around with these, just keep the weight the same, 60g (roughly 4 tablespoons) of each. Linseeds, flaxseeds, nigella seeds or even chopped almonds, hazelnuts or cashews are great too.
• Instant yeast. If you only have active yeast, you’ll need to dissolve the granules in the water before you add it to the dough. If you don’t, the bread won’t rise and you’ll end up with weird yeast granules throughout your bread. Just dissolve the yeast in the water, then wait for 10 minutes before adding it to the mixing bowl with everything else.

You will also need a 900g (2lb) capacity loaf tin for this recipe – measuring about 21cm long, 11cm wide and 7cm high. The size is important here. Because this bread does its first rise in the oven, you need to make sure you’re leaving enough room in the tin to give it space to rise. If you overfill the tin, you’ll end up with a bread explosion as it overflows. This, while it kind of looks cool, is a VERY annoying mess to clean up (trust me, I have done it!!) If you don’t have a tin that’s the same size as mine, just make sure you’re only filling yours two-thirds of the way up.

How to make the bread

Start by lining your loaf tin. I like cutting out two strips of paper – one to line the base and one to line the sides. I find this neater (you don’t end up with crinkly sides) and it’s easier to get the bread out of the tin at the end too. Now get your oven preheating to 120C/250F fan.

Get all your ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Mix everything until you’re left with a sloppy, wet dough. You’ll probably be thinking ‘how could this even become bread?’ but trust me on this!

Pour the mix into the lined loaf tin (it should come two-thirds up the tin). Scatter with more pumpkin and sesame seeds, then cut a couple of slashes through the top of the dough to encourage the bread to rise evenly in the oven.

Transfer the bread to the oven and bake for 20 minutes. This is the magic part where the bread will do its first rise. After 20 minutes, turn the oven up to 220C/430F fan and bake for another 40 minutes. After this time, you’re looking for the bread to be golden, and crispy on the outside and it will start to pull away from the sides of the tin. Remove from the tin and baking paper and pop onto a wire rack to cool slightly, then cut in and enjoy.

Got a question?