Anyone here baking bread?

Earlier today amazon had a few 70$ bread machines. They were gone by lunch. 

The shutdown is great for baking. Usually I make a couple of loaves a week, but it's a bit of a pain to do if you're running around doing various things. But working from home, it's great. 

Tonight, we have freshly baked bloomers and floury baps :) We're working off the Paul Hollywood cookbooks at the moment, so dry goods are measured by weight instead of volume. 

Keith Tanner said:

so dry goods are measured by weight instead of volume. 

Why is this not more common?  It seems like bread is very picky about ratios, and this way of doing things is 10x more accurate.

In reply to ProDarwin :

For breads, its the only for me. I noticed when I want from 6.0 oz of water to 6.7 oz. Big difference  with 10 oz of flour.

RossD said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

For breads, its the only for me. I noticed when I want from 6.0 oz of water to 6.7 oz. Big difference  with 10 oz of flour.

What I don't get is why is there such a range?  I just googled for a recipie and it says this:

5 1/2 to 6 cups (663g to 723g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

That's a big difference.  What am I supposed to do with that? 

 Thankfully the loaf I made tonight was successful.  Successful enough for french toast in the morning anyway.

I try to only bake using my scale. It's harder to find recipes, but the King Arthur flour Website uses weights, so I always start there when I'm looking for a recipe.

I used the recipe from the King Arthur flour Website for a multi grain cinnamon raisin bread yesterday. It's my first non-sourdough bread in over a year.

I had to do a lot of substitutions and alterations. The recipe calls for some of their proprietary multi grain mix, which I don't have. 

Instead of all purpose, I used bread flour. Then, instead of using their proprietary mix, I used a mix of whole wheat flour, cornmeal, rolled oats, roasted sunflower seeds, flax seed, poppy seeds, chia seeds, and black and white sesame seeds.

I didn't use raisins either, instead I used dried cherries, cranberries, and dates.

After the dough started kneading in my stand mixer I had to add quite a bit of flour to get the right consistency to the dough.

I rolled out the first loaf on the counter, painted on the egg wash, then sprinkled on the cinnamon, sugar and flour combination, and rolled it up.

When I started on the second loaf, I realized I had forgotten the fruit in the first one, so I had to unroll it and do it over.

This still turned out amazing. The photo shows loaf number 2, uncut, and a slice from loaf number one.

I'm baking to keep us in sandwiches and toast mainly, so relying on my thrift-store machine. Nothing fancy or handcrafted like you guys--just trying to leave loaves on the shelves at the store for people who can't bake their own. (Plus it's so much better.) Here's today's bake: 

Those of you also using machines, I would really recommend proofing your yeast first in warm water with the sugar, then adding the oil, flour and salt. Use salt to control the rise:  If you're finding that your loaves keep falling, cutting water can fix that, but try upping your salt instead. Salt regulates yeast activity and improves structure, so it's a more reliable way to control the rise and improve the end product. Go up 1/4 t at a time until you have a stable loaf (I am at 1-3/4 t for 3C of bread flour here in warm and humid Florida).

Margie

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

Thanks for the salt tip.

Here's my sourdough from last night.  Cant wait for toast when i get home from work!

A bloomer and the "baps" proofing. Here's the recipe for the latter, but we used butter instead of fake butter. These are all really easy to make.

The buns. I am never buying hamburger buns again, so good. I grilled up a couple of patties using meat from the in-laws mixed with an egg from the in-laws. We had to use store-bought lettuce, however. First time for these, I rolled a few a bit too thin (experimentation) after proofing. My wife also tells me I'm a little too random with the flour, it offends her.

The loaf turned out okay. It's a simple recipe - 500g bread flour, 7g yeast (one packet), 10g salt, 40 ml of olive oil and roughly 300 ml of water - but I'm still learning what it likes. This particular loaf would have appreciated a little more time in the oven, which is odd given that it had the same as usual.

got the King Arthur starter and all was going great until I made a batch (two loaves) and forgot to keep some of the starter to keep it going...d'oh

So, I remade my starter and got it going yesterday. Question: my sourdough mix is too 'soft', when I go for the second rise ( I'm using bread pans), once it gets to the rim of the pan instead of rising above the lip, it just kind of droops over the edge...too much water?

Sent a friend of mine home with some of my starter on Sunday. Him and his wife are good cooks, but don't really bake.

So my starter is definitely good, it's ME that's doing something wrong. I'm beginning to suspect whole wheat flour is important. 

I have a starter ripening now, I'll feed it before bed and try again tomorrow.

In reply to RevRico :

What exactly are you doing?  What exactly is going wrong?  I'm not using whole wheat in my sourdough, besides the first cup to start making the culture.  Other than that, it's just all purpose flour.

I feed my starter with stone ground unbleached all purpose flour, and keep it in the fridge. When I'm going to bake, I pull off 4 ounces and feed it with 3oz bread flour 1oz of AP. 

I let that double in volume, stir it down, give it another half feeding and let it double again. 

From there, my current and best raising/crusted recipe is

8oz starter

10.75oz AP flour

1.5oz bread flour

7oz water

1.75 tsp of salt 

I mix the starter and water, then incrementally add flour until I get a semi sticky mass. Let that rise for 2 hours, then knead in the salt. Over the next 5 hours of rising, I will pull the dough up and over the top, then rotate the bowl 90 degrees every 30 minutes. 

At this point, it feels good in the bowl, I'll roll it into a floured silicone baking mat, and attempt to shape it into rounds. I've replaced this step with an hour in a parchment paper lined cloth basket. 

From there, it's into either a 3 quart pot or a large loaf pan at 450 for 20 minutes with a lid on, then another 10 or so minutes without a lid until it's the color I want. 

I've been reducing the water content every batch, and it's been getting better, but I can't get it to hold a shape at all. No big pretty rounds for me unless I use a sauce pan or big pot.

 I've gone from ^^^^ that

to this though, so it is getting better with time and adjustment. 

Try less water.  Also, shape it into a blob, then score the top a lot with a sharp knife.  I've started doing like 3-4 lines each way.  It helps it rise by not having to fight the crust.

What I do:

My starter lives in a bowl on the table under a towel.  It has never seen the inside of a refridgerator.  I feed it daily with 1 cup all purpose white flour, 1/2 cup filtered water.  If I don't bake that day, I throw about 2/3rds away, then add the flour and water and mix.  If I do bake, I put about 1/3rd in a clean bowl with 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup water and mix it up, then stick it back on the table.  The remaining 2/3rds in the original bowl, I add 1 to 2 cups of flour, depending on what I'm trying to do, and 1/4 to 1/2 cup water (depending on the flour qty.)  Right now, I've been doing 2 cups flour, about a half cup water, 2 tablespoons oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and I have some 5 year old wheat germ in the fridge that I've been adding a tablespoon of to the mix to use it up.  Mix that with a spoon until the spoon doesn't work anymore, then grab it with my hands and knead it until it's like bread dough.  Add a bit of water if there is still dry flour in the bottom of the bowl.  Add a little more flour if it is a sticky mess.  Kneed it until it is all uniform, roll it in a ball, put back in the bowl, cover and come back in a couple hours.  Take it out of the bowl and pound it flat, then fold the edges up as mentioned above somewhere.  That is, take an edge, fold it to the middle, go to the next part, keep doing that until I've done it 5 times.  Then put it on a Pam'ed cookie sheet, score the top as mentioned, put in the oven at about 100F or a tad over.  Come back in 2-4 hours and when it looks like that's all it's going to rise, turn the oven on 350 with a pan of water under the cookie sheet, come back in 30 minutes.  More if you want a darker, harder crust.

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

Thanks for posting your recipe! I used it for my first ever loaf on Sunday. Hopefully the next one will be even better now that it appears the machines mixing action is fully functional (operator error might have contributed to the problem)...but it is tasty, just wound up with a large void.

The Washington Post reports that there's a big upswing in demand for flour and yeast, decreasing stocks in stores and on line.

There isn't a shortage, just increased demand, and there's plenty of capacity for production, according to the article.

I'm certainly baking a lot more, since I am not working.

In reply to Floating Doc :

This is true, I haven't been able to find any yeast recently.

In reply to slowride :

The industry people who were interviewed for the article said that there's plenty of product on the supply end.

My dinner rolls turned out to be biscuits. Going back a few pages to learn the art of yeast :)

I suspect that it's either selling out fast, or else it's low on the restock priority list at the stores I've been going to. I'm sure the situation will calm down before too long and stuff will become more available again.

The Publix where I shop had cut way back on the stock and variety of wheat flour a few months ago, and used the space for a whole bunch of gluten free flour substitutes.

They completely stopped stocking whole wheat flour, except for the store brand, and then that disappeared too.

We had to order a bag of the King Arthur whole wheat on Amazon. I'm using the King Arthur products whenever I can, because I found my results were much more consistent. 

A superior product, and they're also employee owned, and I like supporting that.

slowride said:

I suspect that it's either selling out fast, or else it's low on the restock priority list at the stores I've been going to. I'm sure the situation will calm down before too long and stuff will become more available again.

As noted in the panic thread - it's a redistribution. Restaurants and bakeries are likely seeing a big drop in demand while the consumer side is bumping up. It'll just take a little while to sort that out and package the flour in 10 lb bags instead of the giant packages I imagine in bakeries.

We've had trouble finding flour recently as well. Looks like I might get to experiment with self-raising and all-purpose, as my mother-in-law grabbed us a giant bag of the latter when we asked her to pick up some bread floud.

secretariata said:

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

Thanks for posting your recipe! I used it for my first ever loaf on Sunday. Hopefully the next one will be even better now that it appears the machines mixing action is fully functional (operator error might have contributed to the problem)...but it is tasty, just wound up with a large void.

You're very welcome! As I mentioned, I upped the salt to 1-3/4 t on my last loaf. It was the best yet. Here it is as french toast for this morning's breakfast:

Oh, and I probably should confess this in the thread on hoarding purchases, but I totally drunk-ordered a 50-pound bag of flour last week. I sobered up and canceled it the next morning... now I've got 3 2-pound bags of bread flour back-ordered until April 13. At least my yeast gets here this week. I've got enough all-purpose and whole-wheat flour to use as backups until the bread flour reinforcements arrive, but probably just barely. Bread's been a big part of the diet here at Chez Suddard for the past 2 weeks.

I mentioned the scarcity of flour to JG, and he commented, "How many people own multiple pounds of flour right now that ain't ever baked E36 M3?" I suspect a lot, many of them the same people who are sitting on (pun intended) rolls and rolls of tp. Meanwhile here I am baking my face off so people who can't make their own still have bread to buy in the store. SMDH.

Margie

Day before yesterday i bought a 50 pound bag of bread flour at Costco.  $12.99. So i figured if i tossed half of it I'd still be ahead, but repackaged it in 2 gal ziplocs and gave half to friends, fam and coworkers who bake, the other half I'm making a loaf a day to give to those who dont bake, and cant or shouldnt get out to buy bread.  Make a lots of friends giving homemade bread away during the apocalypse