Bread

I'm interested in the fruit thing, too, as I made my starter with only flour & water. Does some kind of fruit ferment a little faster to kick things off??

I tried originally with some sliced grapes, but the thing smelled like ass for weeks. I never made bread with it. Much easier to get some off a friend.

Some fruit skins have yeast on them - If the fermentation process for that fruit involves squashing them, then they're probably covered in yeast (grapes, apples etc...)

As there is more yeast than is present in flour alone, that suggests the starter would get going more quickly.

As for the whole organic flour thing - The cultivation and production of flour labelled "organic" still involves the same industrial chemicals (thanks to the Soil Association being co-opted by big agribusiness) - so the notion that organic flour has more yeast present or fewer yeast retarding chemicals rings a little specious.

@TW Cheers fella. Thought that might be the case :)

I'd not heard of the using organic flour as being "better", only that less processed flours were recommended to get your starter going. I.e. that wholemeal is better than white, etc...
I've bunged any old flour in to feed it since it got going, though. Rye, Spelt, white, whatever is to hand.

BUT on the organic thing, a friend bought me a bag of this last birthday. Made a couple of loaves with it - just basic yeasted stuff as I didn't want to risk wasting it on my ropey sourdough - and it was so, so nice. Unreal toast.

Link

Someone with more patience/skill would no doubt get some pretty excellent results.

It is to do with feeding the yeast with some sugar, maybe starch. The starch is easier to be converted , I believe, to sugars.

Did you discard the sliced grapes in the cast off?

Worked the easiest, while the grape and just flour and water method failed. For some mixes mention using a boiled potato!

Partly I think. Paul Hollywood's book reliably informed me they'd disintegrate anyway. Not the case.

I used a grated organic apple, water, and flour in my starter (from the Paul Hollywood book). It got bubbly really fast so I ran it through a sieve on day 2 to remove the apple pieces and cracked on with feeding it.

http://paulhollywood.com/recipes/sourdough-starter/

Been trying to get a sourdough starter going but after having one bubbling up then separating and dying and the second one not even taking off, I decided to use yeast today. Followed the first recipe from Tartine 1, but used 40g of fresh yeast instead, and doubled the amount of rye flour in there.

Yet to try it, but it came out looking like this, pretty pleased so far

Used a cast iron casserole on top of the baking stone yesterday and the crust has a crunch that wasn't there without it. Wet as a motherfucker but has good holes. Fnar. Pleased with that one.

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^^ by far the best bread i've made. Will try same method again end of next week to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

I'm staying with friends right now and have a lot of spare time, this has lead to a massive increase in my bread making. Here's what I'm up to.

500g white flour (cheap basic plain flour)
7g instant yeast
1tsp salt
2tsp sugar
275ml warm water

Mix and knead for 15 mins
Prove for 45 mins
1 minute knocking back
2nd prove for 90 mins - EDIT put some veg / olive / motor oil on a paper towel and lightly wipe the inside of the proving bowl first, the dough is easier to remove after proving without losing air.
Score the top of the dough for prettyness
Oven for 30 mins at 190 with small casserole dish of water

This has been consistently great, produces a firm golden crust, fairly dense loaf with similarly sized 'air pockets'. I might do another tomorrow and will try to take a pic or two.

Problem is that the greedy buggers devour the lot in one sitting, which is nice really

^ try the same recipe with top quality flour and report back! I'm curious to know how much difference it makes

I've been using good 500 'bread' flour in the UK, but my local super market in Munich only offers 450 - but it costs about 40p and I'm being tight. The difference seems to be minimal. A bread website (yes, WTF? But I've been bored) I spotted yesterday said that today's cheap flour is better quality than has ever been available to bakers throughout the ages, so I figured that, as baking bread is about as traditional as you can get, I'll continue with the cheap stuff for now.

I'm aware that my recipe above is the same as found all over the internet and on the back of Allinsons yeast packets, but it's working well for me.

I've added something about oiling the bowl for the second prove too, makes it easy to get the dough from the bowl with minimal air loss / dough sinkage. I invented that.

Lidl strong white bread flour has flour and ascorbic acid while tesco own brand strong white bread flour contains calcium carbonate, iron, niacin (vit B3)and thiamen(vit B1) but this just could be that tesco are conforming to EU law of HAVING to list all ingriedients as under british law you didn't not have to list calcium carbonate, iron, niacin, and thiamen.

Sounds good. Post pictures!

This is how today's loaf turned out.

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Reading through this thread has given me a hunch to give making my own bread a proper go; I bake a lot but don't do much with dough other than trying pizza/doughnuts/cinnamon rolls that have mixed results. Can anyone recommend me a straightforward sandwich/bloomer recipe I could use to get started on? Thanks!

Search for Dan Lepards simple white loaf on the Guardian website. It's a winner.

Cheers!

today's cheap flour is better quality than has ever been >

Better how? Better to bake with, or longer shelf life? Plenty of ways to define better

I don't know, but hopefully more like this

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html

but sadly, I expect more like this

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/lessons/yourfirstloaf

In other floury news, I'm making pizza right now

Right Now

Def Leppard are making bread now?

The drummer kneads a hand though...