Anyone here baking bread?

I'm baking a lot to stave off the cabin fever. All sourdough.

Forgot to photograph the banana bread, and it's down to the last slice. I make mine with chocolate chips and pecans (and sourdough starter of course).

Last night I did a couple of loaves of multigrain. These are the first that I made since buying some mashed potato flakes, as directed by the recipe.

I would have liked more rise, but it's actually supposed to be more of a sandwich type bread without the light, airy crumb that you would expect from most sourdough recipes.

Since it has a fairly high percentage of whole wheat flour, plus sunflower seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, and chia, a good rise can be pretty difficult.

I added some vital wheat gluten, the first time I've used that as well. I'm not real sure what it was supposed to do, I think it will help with the rise, but I was pretty tentative about the quantity.

Since it's my first time making this recipe, I don't know if it made any difference or not.

Baked them in my Romertopf clay roasters.

I made a loaf yesterday and its mostly gone. So I started another one. My same white bread recipe as I always make. This last time i put it in a small loaf pan instead of a lump of bread.

Is it possible to make a decent loaf with regular flour? I don't have a bread machine.

In reply to slowride :

Anything is possible. I use all purpose flour a lot, for a lot of different breads.

What do you want to end up with? Sandwich bread, sweet bread like a banana bread, yeast, sourdough...

I would suggest starting with looking through the recipes on the King Arthur flour Website.

Yeah, what is the difference between all purpose and bread flour anyway?

In reply to Floating Doc :

Thanks! I found some good stuff there. I am looking for sandwich bread.

In reply to Justjim75 :

Bread flour has a higher gluten content to allow for better texture formation.

I'm paraphrasing alton Brown for that, but his good eats explanation should be on YouTube.

In reply to slowride :

I use "all purpose" white flour for the above that I've shot pics of.  "Bread Flour" or better for bread, etc., has a higher gluten content, and I buy that when I can.  Sam's stopped carrying it a few months ago, so "all purpose" it is. If I buy a sack at wally world, then I get the "better for bread."  All purpose flour has enough gluten to rise.  "Biscuit" bread doesn't rise for E36 M3.  I once bought a bag of that.  I had to buy some gluten and add it to the flour each time to get it to rise.

My five year old and I made meat buns yesterday. I had leftover home made corned beef and leftover homemade hoisin sauce and mixed the two and put it in a homemade egg bun type bread with a butter wash then baked it. It was flipping phenomenal. 
 

My five year old was a big help she put the filling in and rolled up the buns as I was rolling out the dough pieces. Sure they're not round but we had a blast and a delicious dinner from it!!

In reply to Dr. Hess :

OK, so that will work well enough for my purposes. I actually wasn't aware there were so many kinds of flour!

I discovered this instant sourdough starter by accident and love it. 
 

just make sure you mix it with dry ingredients thoroughly before adding the wet. 
 

https://redstaryeast.com/red-star-platinum-instant-sourdough-yeast/

I'm going to give it my first attempt tomorrow.  Finally found a bread machine at the thrift store.  Only took 3 months of stopping by at least once a week...whoever posted that these were readily available for cheap at thrift stores must have started a run on them! 

With the $7 Magic Chef bread machine and ingredients I have a total of $22.55 invested.  I figure if I get 12 loaves of bread out of this adventure I'll be $ ahead.  The 1.5 lb loaf pan looks about right for a weeks worth of bread, so maybe I won't wind up tossing half of every loaf because it either got stale or moldy...

Wish me luck!

I've put my thrift store bread machine back into production for the pandemic, been fiddling about trying to perfect a nice white/sandwich loaf. Found that contrary to all bread machine instructions, actually proofing the yeast first does give a finer crumb and better crust. Here's where I'm at right now:

might up the salt to 1-3/4 T--still losing a little rise on bake. Close, though....

Margie

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

Take my money!  Except they arent taking orders at the reccomended site and the local options only have the regular yeast.  Dont suppose i could paypal you for a box and a beer and you send it to me?  Lol!

Dusted off the apron and made a nice french country loaf because of this thread.  Probably about time to revive the sourdough starter (if I can get my hands on more flour that is).

In reply to Ethnic Food-Wrap Aficionado :

I'm good for flour, for now...

Wife shopped today, bought some 2 lb bags; they were all out of the 5 lb size. I have a total of about 16 lbs, which I can go through fast if I'm not careful. 

Can't run out completely, need to keep the starter fed.

I'm a little late to this party, but I've been trying my hand at baking lately.  This was yesterdays project, some nice dinner rolls. 

Lets use my normal bread recipe, let it rise a bit too long, then roll them in to breadsticks, and see what happens!

Not bad looking. Maybe could have kept them in longer.

secretariata said:

whoever posted that these were readily available for cheap at thrift stores must have started a run on them! 

heh, sorry, that was probably me.  don't know about how it is these days but last i checked they seemed abundant...

Im here working from home, from the well-stocked kitchen, trying to not gain 30 lbs in the next few weeks and you guys are putting up this bread porn. Sammich time. 

i dont know the recipe but my mom makes some very basic bread in one of the bread machines and its amazing. Fresh and hot with some good butter, oh man. 

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

I thought the role of salt was to restrain the activity of the yeast and make smaller "holes"?  I never use more than a teaspoon for one loaf.

Edit:  Well, I took the opportunity to read up on salt in bread baking and while salt does tend to regulate the activity of yeast, the recommended amount seems to be between 1.5 and 1.8 percent of the weight of the flour.

Edit edit:  If my calculations are correct, one teaspoon of salt and 3 cups of flour is 1.3%.  two teaspoons of salt and 3 cups of flour is 2.6% by weight.

And not bread, per se, but my last few homemade pizzas have used Fleishmann's so-called "pizza crust" yeast, and the reviews have been favorable.  In fact, my older son said "Dad, this might be the best homemade pizza you've ever made."  I've been making homemade pizza for 40 years, so yeah, try that yeast if you make your own crust.

Fueled by Caffeine said:

I discovered this instant sourdough starter by accident and love it. 
 

just make sure you mix it with dry ingredients thoroughly before adding the wet. 
 

https://redstaryeast.com/red-star-platinum-instant-sourdough-yeast/

I wound up with a sample in the mail, but haven't tried it yet. It actually works as advertised?

I've noticed the bread machine pickin's have been somewhat slim these days at my favorite thrift store.  I haven't been in others to compare with.  Goodwill pissed me off when they started charging MSRP for their crap.  Anyway, I have a couple in stock and I fortunately haven't needed one since I started using a good surge suppressor on the one I have. 

I'm sure I've posted this before.  My standard bread machine recipe (Marjie, this is the recipe for the bread mix I sent you years ago):

1 cup whole wheat flour (I buy from the farmer, but he kinda flaked out on me last time.  I may have to suck it up and use "store bought" whole wheat)

2 cups white flour (better for bread if I can get it, otherwise all purpose from 25 lb sacks at Sam's)

12.5 oz water

2 tblspoons oil (I use canola, but olive or whatever)

1 tblspoon Flieshman's Yeast (buy at Sam's 2 lbs for $5).

1.25-ish teaspoon salt

2 tblspoons sugar

Put in the machine, hit "go."  Knock the corners into the ball with a spatchula after it has started to mix.  That's because one paddle in a rectangle doesn't hit the corners, and sometimes there's flour stuck there.  If the top falls in, decrease the water quantity a tablespoon at a time.  If it doesn't rise enough, add water a tablespoon at a time.  Measure your ingredients carefully and the same way each time.