The Bread Thread

[Ham]

Anyone used DME (spray dried malt) or malt extract in bread and want to share?
What I'm going for is trying to make nicer bread for making toast (I like my toast golden and slightly soft, not shattering), I'm not really aiming to change the flavour much, though I appreciate that may be unavoidable...

I use malt as standard in my white bread, around a big dollop in a loaf (750g flour) and recommend it to the house for flavour and texture. Try it, you won't look back. In use, I put the dollop (mebbe 30g?) into 100ml of boiling water to dissolve and top up with the rest of liquid cold. I'm less impressed with adding to wholemeal, I've moved onto using molasses for that. I use Meridian, and tend to buy from Dolphin.

[Marco Stefano]

Standard loaf for years has been 80% wholemeal 20% white, medium-sized tin loaf using dried yeast & a dash of rapeseed oil; this is now called 'Raw Grandpa Toast', as it's usual journey to the plate is via the toaster, and buttered for young Master Marco. Pizza dough is made every couple of weeks; we roll out and assemble toppings straight on the hot stones as quickly as possible with good results.

Recently I tried to make baguettes using this recipe ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-husjZkxHw ) and was amazed at the lack of any real effort on my part and the resulting chewy and quite suitable crumb. Ludicrously easy.

Recently, someone at the rowing club said 'bring a pot and have some sourdough starter', so I've been using that for a few weeks. Just experimenting with overnight fermentations & combinations of recipes (including the recipes above) and it seems to work well; quite mild in terms of sourness, but tasty. I'm just feeding the starter after use (no discards) with wholemeal & white, which seems to revive okay after a day out in the kitchen (very gloopy - lots of polysaccharides, I suspect), then it lives in the fridge for a few days before use. Good fun trying this stuff out.

[geoff]

Cheapskate that I am, I tried reusing baking paper (slightly brown and crispy=fragile) from a previous bake.

The paper naturally broke and I dropped the dough down the side of my Dutch oven.

Result is an interestingly misshapen loaf!



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[Mrs Pingu]

Made a focaccia (a la Felicity Cloake), turns out we could be eating this for days, it's quite big.
20240204_180346-COLLAGE by The Pingus, on Flickr

[Feanor]

I often do this with left-over balls of pizza dough.
Works really well.

Oddly enough, I was just talking about Felicity to a friend on my club ride today.
She has made me Spanakopita in the past, when I was round at hers chainsawerizing a fallen tree and it was from one of Felicity's 'I'll try *all the recipes* and distil the One True Recipe out of them all' recipes.

[Mrs Pingu]

Yes, this was a 'the perfect' recipe

[Feanor]

Using leftover 'overnight poolish dough' is probably a bit out of spec, but it's the best way to use leftover dough balls.

Confession:
First time I did this, I went out into the garden so snip rosemary for this.  It is close to the lavender, which looked identical. Yes, I made soap-flavoured focaccia. Idiot-boy.

[Mrs Pingu]

I was just thinking of that as I was ripping the rosemary up 

[orraloon]

Quick Q from an easy does it, Panasonic breadmaker user:  not been able for a while to buy wholemeal bread flour in local 'Every Little Helps' supermarkets / Coop store, own brand or the more expensive stuff.  Is there some shortage thing going on?

[Feanor]

Quick Q from an easy does it, Panasonic breadmaker user:  not been able for a while to buy wholemeal bread flour in local 'Every Little Helps' supermarkets / Coop store, own brand or the more expensive stuff.  Is there some shortage thing going on?

I've found horriblemarkets to be very hit and miss.
Some of the local farm shops have a better selection.

But I usually just buy online, eg:
https://www.bakerybits.co.uk/flour/flour-by-application/bread

[Flite]

We get ours from a local (40mile round trip is local to us) wholefood store.
But it always used to be available from our rather more local tiny co-op

[citoyen]

Been neglecting my sourdough starter lately. Had a look at it this morning. There was mould on the jar. Damn. Back to square one...

[Jaded]

I’ve been to Shipton Mill (again…) and have some more floury goodness. Flatus came too, which may surprise.

In the last couple of days i have made a glorious white and a stunning wholemeal.

I think I know why I laid bricks before, and look forward to altering ingredients and timing for the better.

What's your theory?

I discovered that it is good practice to soak seeds in water before adding them to the mix. Also, oats soak up a lot of water*.

I've just developed a loaf that is 150gm wholemeal, 350gm white, 50 gm seeds, blob of butter, salt and 350gm water. Rises well, nice colour, and texture interest from the seeds. I think this may become my standard loaf 

*I'd like to find a way of incorporating oats as I like the flavour. But one step at a time.

[Mrs Pingu]

Nice, I should have a go with seeds again when I'm feeling brave

[Tim Hall]

Saturday is bread making day. First operation is to mix some starter (which is rye flour based) with whatever flour is needed for the levain for the day's loaf. This is normally white wheat flour as I normally make a white loaf. However yesterday, a brain fart on my part meant I made a rye flour levain.  Made the white loaf anyway and just pulled it from the oven. Looks ok, taste report to follow.

[Jaded]

Took a loaf to our son. He'd asked for a white loaf, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. I had to swap 50 of the grams of White for Wholemeal. As he is Vegan I used a dribble of oil, not a blob of butter.

He and his partner liked it a lot.

But they didn't get it all. We ate a significant amount. 

[Ham]

Lately I've been getting inconsistent rise out of my bread, which was slightly odd as the way I bake gives very consistent results. But, I've been experimenting with various flour from other supermarkets. Just baked Asda vs Waitrose, and I was shocked at the difference. (just FTR, the white is Asda, too). The loaf tin is slightly different shape, with identical quantities, but not sufficient to explain the difference - look at the quality of the rise)

[Wowbagger]

Which is better?

[Ham]

The Waitrose in this instance, better flavour and consistency, the Asda didn't caramalise well in the toaster (yes I like it that dark). To be fair, i have been using other brands like Sainsbo's quite happily, and (I think) even Asda's, too. This speaks more to consistency of quality than overall usability.

I've been very happy with Waitrose essential wholemeal, which is the same price as Sainsbo's too. Tesco (slightly cheaper) is OK, too, but I have suspicions about their consistency over time as well.

[Tim Hall]

Sunday I made a wholemeal sourdough loaf and put in the fridge for overnight final proofing (proving?) with a view to baking it Monday evening.

Get to work Monday morning to find I'm needed in Newcastle. The Geordie one, not the under Lyme one.  This meant I wsn't going to be back to bake for a couple of days.  Nipped home to grab an overnight bag and bunged to dough in the freezer.  It's out now, thawing.  I'll see how it bakes this evening. 

[Arminius]

Right technically pizza but its a kinda bread

I was lucky enough to get a pizza stone for Christmas and the very strict instructions say preheat stone and then put the pizza on. Oh great and wise assembled how's the best way to get fairly sticky pizza dough from the large chopping board I make them on to the stone?

I make mine on a silicone sheet and then put that on the stone (or steel in my case). ICBA with having polenta all over the kitchen floor. (I used a baking sheet as the peel and put the silicone sheet and pizza on using that).

Long-time listener to this thread, first time caller...

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get a 3 year old involved in making pizzas, without it becoming a bit of a guddle?! What I mean is, are there any techniques, flours, etc that will be robust enough to cope well with an enthusiastic toddler/child getting stuck in, won't require too much work, and can still give reasonable results?

[Hot Flatus]

Right technically pizza but its a kinda bread

I was lucky enough to get a pizza stone for Christmas and the very strict instructions say preheat stone and then put the pizza on. Oh great and wise assembled how's the best way to get fairly sticky pizza dough from the large chopping board I make them on to the stone?

I make mine on a silicone sheet and then put that on the stone (or steel in my case). ICBA with having polenta all over the kitchen floor. (I used a baking sheet as the peel and put the silicone sheet and pizza on using that).

Long-time listener to this thread, first time caller...

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get a 3 year old involved in making pizzas, without it becoming a bit of a guddle?! What I mean is, are there any techniques, flours, etc that will be robust enough to cope well with an enthusiastic toddler/child getting stuck in, won't require too much work, and can still give reasonable results?

yes.

if you Google dough recipes, follow one, and after first proof shap into balls for second proof.  The when stretching out ball have it in a pile of flour.

Plenty of YouTube vids on how to shape and stretch pizza dough balls.

[Ham]

Yes. Make a normal white dough, use a rolling pin to roll out (let it rest to help, don't worry about it to much. Little'uns can do rolling with some help. Shape doesn't really matter. Use a tin of pizza sauce or just tomato paste. Let them hang on to the grater while you grate, cheddar is good, ready grated mozzarella can be used straight from the freezer (as can cheddar obv)

Any strong white flour will work

[Arminius]

Thanks both!  We've changed plans, and are going to make some German Easter pastries, but we'll definitely be making pizza another time.

[fimm]

My husband got a bread machine for Christmas. He mostly makes the bread, but sometimes I do.
He recently bought some rye flour, and then discovered that his machine doesn't have a setting for rye bread.
Yesterday it was my turn to make some bread. I followed a recipe that I liked the look of, but instead of using 400g of white flour I used 300g white and 100g of a new packet of wholemeal flour. At least, I thought it was wholemeal. Turns out it was the rye flour.
The bread seems to have turned out OK - a bit less risen than some, but not a disaster...