Bread is an essential part of any Spanish meal. I have never sat down to a comida in Spain when there wasn't a loaf of bread on the table. If you order a tapa in just about any bar, it will come with bread.
So if you are planning a Spanish meal, or throwing a tapas party, good bread, along with wine and olives, should be the first thing on your to-do list.
I have written several easy recipes for Spanish-style breads. All of them are based on Mark Bittman's now-famous article for Jim Lahey's no-knead bread.
The recipes are simple. They don't require a bread machine or heavy duty mixer. Their only disadvantage is that they require a long, slow 18-hour rise at seventy degrees. If you can plan a day in advance and if you have the right temperature in your kitchen, I encourage you to use them. If your kitchen is hot, as ours here in Central Florida is much of the year, or if you must have the bread the same day, here's a variation that's both quicker and more forgiving of less-than-ideal temperatures. It's based once again on a Mark Bittman recipe, Faster No-Knead Bread. Bittman suggests using whole grain flours to make this quicker loaf, but it works equally well--actually better, in my experience--with a blend of white flour and whole wheat.
This is our daily bread for much of the year. I use a regular rectangular loaf pan most of the time, for pan de molde, which is great sliced for sandwiches, toast, or tapas. But you can make this bread in round free-form country loaves or baguette-style just as easily.
Here's the recipe
2 cups of all-purpose flour, or "bread flour"
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt
1 teaspoon of yeast
1 1/2 cups of water
Olive oil
Mix the dry ingredients.
Stir in the water to make a ragged dough.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rise 3 to 4 hours (depending on the temperature in your kitchen: higher temps will make the dough rise more quickly).
If you're using a loaf pan, rub it down with olive oil. Roll the dough in the pan to coat it with oil. Dust the dough generously on all sides with flour (whole wheat is fine). Place the oiled and flour-dusted dough in the oiled loaf pan. (All of this dusting and oiling prevents the loaf from sticking).
Cover it with plastic wrap (the same you used for the first rise will do fine). Let it rise an hour or two. Again the time depends on the temps in your kitchen.
Bake the loaf in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. Take the loaf out of the pan. Be careful. It'll be hot.
Place the loaf back in the oven. Put it directly on the rack. (This allows the crust to develop on all sides). Let it bake at 425 for 10 minutes more.
After ten minutes, turn off the oven. Open the oven door part-way, but leave the loaf on the oven rack for ten minutes more. You can leave the bread in the open oven to slowly cool, if you like. When it's cool, it's ready to eat.
Again, this quicker no-knead bread can be made as a round country loaf or as a baguette just as easily. See my recipes for Spanish-style breads for more information.
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