This year my family and I will be celebrating Halloween at home in isolation and I thought i’d would be great to bake something delicious and spooky with my 6 year old sons. I have to say that this was a lovely easy bake and we took great pleasure in eating it warm with some Nutella!
Ingredients
| 750g | Strong bread flour |
| 14g | Yeast, fast acting |
| 2 tbsp | Sugar |
| 1 tbsp | Salt* |
| 60g + 1 tbsp | Olive oil |
| 500g | Warm water |
| 1 | Medium egg |
| 2 | Pumpkin seeds |
| 6-8 | Sliced almonds |
| Jam | |
| Nutella |
Method
Making the dough
- Place the warm water, yeast and sugar into a jug. Mix thoroughly and leave it for approximately 5 minutes until you have a lovely bubbly mixture.
- In the meantime add your flour, salt and 60g olive oil to your food mixing bowl.
- When your water is lovely and bubbly add it to your bowl, attach the dough hook and start mixing.
- It will take a few minutes for all of the ingredients to combine and come together to resemble a dough, but leave the food mixer to knead the dough for around 5 minutes*.
- Take a large bowl, add the tablespoon of olive oil and coat the sides.
- When the dough is ready, tip it into the oiled bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and leave it in a warm place to rise for around an hour to double in size.
- When you’re around 45 minutes into the rising time check the dough and if you feel that it’s almost doubled in size, go ahead and pre-heat your oven.
- Pre-heat your oven to 190°C fan/400°F.
Yeast mixture 
Yeast mixture after 5 minutes
Shaping the spider
- While your oven heats up, we can shape the dough.
- Take a baking sheet and line it with non-stick baking parchment.
- Lightly oil your work surface. This is going to prevent the dough from sticking to it. Oil your hands too.
- Tip out the dough onto your work surface and press your fingers into the dough to release the excess air – this is something you can get your little assistant to do while you watch on.
- Divide the dough into 2 equal parts. One will be for the body so set this aside.
- Take the 2nd of the parts and divide this again into 2 equal halves. One will be for the head so set this aside.
- Take the remaining half and divide this into 4 equal size pieces. These are the legs.
- Shape the head and the body into rounds and place these onto your baking tray leaving a gap between them for the legs.
- Help your little assistant to roll out the legs. Despite hours and hours of using moulding clay you’d be surprised how hard they find this so be on hand to assist if needed. The texture is totally different.
- You’ll need the smaller legs going around the head and 2 larger legs going around the body.
- Beat the egg and get your little assistant to egg wash the spider.
It’s not easy…. 
shaping spider legs!
Baking the spider bread
- Carefully place your spider into your oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.
- When your loaf is baked, remove the baking sheet from the oven and leave the spider bread to cool on the sheet for 20 minutes before attempting to move it to a cooling rack.
- When the loaf has cooled a little, take a small bowl or ramekin and use it as a stencil to cut around to make a well for the Nutella dip.
- Fill the bowl with Nutella and place it in the well.
- With the loaf still a little warm it will melt the Nutella a little, so break off a leg, dip and eat!
- Enjoy!
Notes
- *When you make the dough, if you feel it’s quite wet still and too sticky, add another 50g of flour and leave it to mix for another 5 minutes before you tip it out.
- *When measuring the salt, using a measuring spoon and ensure it is a level measurement.
- Using oil on your work surface will stop it sticking to it. Adding flour at this stage would make the loaf more dense.
- Feel free to use other decorations to make the face.
- We love Nutella, but jam or curd would work just as well!
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