Bread

[FF No.5417667]

Bread and baked goods thread. Haven't started one in a while

Anybody bake anything interesting recently? Anybody have any questions about baking bread?

I have some 50% rye and 15% oat bread proofing right now. Will post pics when it's out of the oven.

[Anonymous No.5417692]

I make a no-knead loaf almost every week. Lots of variation, but they're all variations on that one super popular recipe. However, I recently tried this no-knead:

http://savoringthepast.net/2012/07/09/18th-century-no-knead-french-bread/

which has butter, an egg, and milk. It was pretty fucking nom. The crust had a wonderful nutty, toasty taste. But it's best eaten within a day. After the first loaf I made a whole wheat version with raisins and flax seeds, which was even better. Makes great sandwich bread.

[Anonymous No.5419084]

>>5417667

For Passover, because that's just how I am, I make freshly-baked bread every day with the lifehacker no-knead recipe.

I've kept it up this year. Now I have a batch that is about a week and a half old, and it's starting to smell a bit like alcohol. I know that's the "hooch."

Baked some last night and it almost tasted like sourdough.

I pull off about a golfball sized hunk, and let it rest for as long as I can. 15-30 minutes isn't enough, I've found. Yesterday I forgot about it and preheated the oven to 400, and had to bake it for at least 30 minutes. I find pre-heating and then baking is best.

Anyway, still not sure what to do with my leftover dough. Should probably start over again I guess.

[Anonymous No.5419093]

guys do you have any gross stories about hippy bitches using yeast infections to make a starter

[Anonymous No.5419683]

>>5419084
You left dough rise long enough for the yeast to start fermenting it? Huh. Honestly, just try baking the rest of it and tell us how it came out, and if you don't want to eat all the bread it gives you, just stale the extra and make bread pudding.

Anyway, question for you all: when baking in bread pans, is there a way to keep the bread from expanding and baking at a weird angle? Like it's lopsided at one end out the top.

[Anonymous No.5419691]

How much flour should I use for a 100% whole wheat loaf if I'm baking it in a loaf pan?

[Anonymous No.5420435]

This thread makes me sad.

[Anonymous No.5420582]

what are some literature for babby's first baking?
I'm mostly interested in making pizza, soft pretzels and bagels

[Anonymous No.5420623]

>>5420582
>pizza
pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php

and

slice.seriouseats.com/recipes

>pretzels and bagels
www.thefreshloaf.com

and

kingarthurflour.com/recipes/

>Unsolicited advice that will make your baking easier and better:

Buy a digital kitchen scale. Use recipes that give flour by weight instead of volume (ie cups).

If you just gotta use recipes that specify 'cups', use the volume to mass calculator at foodsim.unclesalmon.com to determine how much flour you need.

[Anonymous No.5420657]

>>5419093
Bread yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae
People yeast is Candida Albicans

You guys have any good stories about people using motor oil to replace olive oil in recipes?

[Anonymous No.5420707]

Just got hired as a baker at universal studios, pretty excited to start

[Anonymous No.5420726]

>>5420657
No people yeast is lactobacillus and so is sour dough.

[FF No.5420742]

Yikes, totally forgot I started this thread. I attached a photo of the rye/oat bread. Turned out nicely.

>>5417692
No-knead is great. Hard to argue with slow bread.

>>5419093
>>5420657
I think it's less about the yeast, and more about the lactic acid bacteria. In theory, one should be able to create a lavain from vaginal secretions, though I'm not sure it would produce a very palatable bread, and might even contain a few pathogens.

>>5419683
Sounds like you need to work on your shaping. You can also try slashing to create an expansion point in the top.

[Anonymous No.5420757]

>>5420623
What is so great about flour by weight?

[Anonymous No.5421022]

>>5420757
Ingredient ratios are important in baking. Variation in how packed your flour is will change how much fits in a measuring cup. Measuring by weight is guaranteed to be correct.

[Anonymous No.5421056]

ok I have a larege and pretty thick dutxh oven
can I make a decent bread on my stove provided that I do have a decent woklike burner?
I also have some sourdough starter that was given to me so I guess I should find ways to use it

[Anonymous No.5421066]

>>5420657
yeah but they still might have similar propeties
and besides motor oil is organic material
i was just hoping you guys had some doozeys i mean bitches be crazy these days i could see someone trying it

[Anonymous No.5421130]

I've recently started baking my own bread after a few years not doing so. Back then it was some failed-to-rise french bread. This time is some no-knead honey oat bread. I've been doing it for a little over a month now and I got to say, it make for some great breakfast. Three slices with one slice each to preserve, ____-butter and eggs. They slices are all of the right size too so I don't get bored with a slice. I'm doing the make two batch, freeze one thing ever two weeks and well, now I got some whole wheat flour and it for sure acting differently. It's not rising as much compared to say white flour.

I'm currently eying the second recipe here: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2010/02/14/when-trends-collide-no-knead-meet-whole-grain/

It might do the trick. It mixes enough for two breads and its no knead. I wonder how it will react without the vital wheat gluten.

[Anonymous No.5421190]

I was taught by my mother to never use measurements for the flour when making bread since there's differences in how much you want to use depending on the humidity and stuff and instead focus on how the dough feels when you are mixing it. I know how to make the dough to cinnamon buns this way without any trouble, but do you think I would be able to make different kinds of bread the same way without relying on measuring the flour?

[Anonymous No.5421233]

>>5417667
me! me! I have a question
I've started a sourdough in whole wheat flour and made bread with it
tastes good, but the holes are too small, too few and the crumb is generally a bit too dense for my liking.
also the dough doesn't seem to be rising in the oven all that much
what do?

[Anonymous No.5421559]

>>5420582

Bagel baker here, bagels are kind of shitty to make in a home setting. At work we have a 40-gallon kettle and even that will only make 2 dozen at a time.

[Anonymous No.5421719]

>>5419683

I just dumped it out and there are three mini-loaves. Based on the past I can let it rise for as long as I want, so I'll check back on the state of the rise in about six hours and then bake away.

I will halve the recipe again for the next batch and have

1 C water
1/2 T salt
1/2 T yeast
2 1/6 C flour

That should keep it rolling without fermenting. I think.

Also I think I'm going to coat my rising crock with butter, mix the dough on the countertop, and then put it in the crock. Even with covering the dough some of it has dried out on the sides, so this might solve it.

On to batch No. 3

[Anonymous No.5421725]

>>5420582

Good luck with the bagels. Having watched my mother make them, they're a pita:

>dough
>shape
>rise
>boil
>bake
>forced compliments on the chewy nastiness

Tough for the home cook. Let us know how it turns out if you try.

[FF No.5421877]

>>5421190
I always bake by feel. I still measure my ingredients, but things invariably get adjusted to account for different flours. I log the adjustments in my baking logbook so that I can always have a reference for how I changed things.

>>5421233
Could be a number of things. First, your sourdough starter may not yet be mature. Second, you may be underkneading. Third, you may be using 100% whole wheat flour, which never produces a light and airy bread. Fourth, you may be underproofing prior to baking the bread in the oven. Fifth, you may be too rough with the bread when transitioning it into the oven.

>>5421559
>>5421725
Bagels are definitely a bitch at home. I used to make them regularly, but since moving back to a major city I just buy them.

[Anonymous No.5421928]

>>5421877
Without trying to be too invasive to privacy, could you post a page or layout of how you record your results? Or is it just random bullet points?

Is it absolutely imperative to measure by weight? Do you measure honey and water and sugar and butter by weight in baking as well? A lot of my efforts come out dense, and I think I may over work or under work the dough.

[Anonymous No.5421960]

>>5417667
what's the rest 35% ?
also any good recipes for delicious bread, although obviously what you might enjoy something, i might not.

[FF No.5422035]

>>5421928
See pic related. I think it's imperative to measure by weight, but in the interest of full disclosure, I have a degree in food chemistry, so it might be reasonable to expect me to be very precise. I measure everything by weight. It's easy enough to put the mixing bowl on the scale and then measure everything into it.

>>5421960
It's actually more than 35%. I'm quoting baker's percentages. I used 50% rye and 50% bread flour for the flour percentage, then 15% baker's percentage of oats. I don't know what delicious bread means to you. If you give me an idea of what that might be, I can certainly give you a recipe.

[Anonymous No.5422107]

>>5420657
People absolutely make sourdough bread from vaginal cultures.
There was an anon here a few years back that made what he called "Jane Dough".
There is a lesbian bakery in San Francisco that claims their starter was made many years ago by Gloria stienem.

[Anonymous No.5424151]

>>5421719

Well, not surprisingly, they tasted and looked like sourdough. Very tough crust, which I like, but it needed a bit more loft. So a week seems to be the maximum for this.

[Anonymous No.5424194]

>>5421022
Lol. It's more to do with water absorption, which comes down the quality of the grain before it's made into flour. In wetter climates, grain ironically takes on more water. In dryer climates, grain can't hold water for love nor money. Baking measurements are still accurate (especially for yeast and salt, as the salt is there to mediate yeast growth, not for flavour) the only real floating number is the amount of water you're putting in the recipe.
As my Head Baker once told me; "If you can get away with more water, add more water. Water is free, other ingredients aren't." Which is one reason to pump bread full of water. The downside to this is that it decreases shelf life.
Which in turn can be combated by using a recipe that calls for fat of any kind. Too much butter can make it taste a little cheesy however, so vegetable fat (shortening) is the usual go to.

>>5419683
Yeast is technically fermenting the moment you mix it with sugar. It metabolises the sugar to form glucose, which grants enough ATP to expand the yeast colony. The by-product of this chemical reaction is ethanol, which is why if you prove and knock back bread 3-4 times, it will taste better than if you'd knocked it back once and then let it prove.

As to your lopsided bread issue, you aren't working the air pockets out of your bread properly. You want to pin the bread out (with a rolling pin, in case you were lost in the syntax) Then roll it into shape, taking care to give it one final roll at the end to seal the seam in place.
If you've done it correctly, the seam should be a line running from end to end, perfectly down the middle.
If the case still persists, you may have not be mixing it well enough, in which case salt is not dispersed correctly and colonies of yeast have grown unchecked. This means that when you bake off, the large colony of yeast explodes with carbon dioxide, which creates these bulges and air pockets.

Hope that helps your issue. Good luck in the future.