Bread

Just keep a small amount of starter and feed it regularly

Best is totally subjective. Give two bakers the same ingredients and method and they are still likely to produce different breads

Make something with a poolish or biga. Kinda the yeasted equivalent of sourdough. For a poolish, mix 50/50 water and flour, say 250g of each for a dough that'll use 1kg flour total. Add a tiny amount of yeast - 1/4 teaspoon. Mix and leave overnight, combine this into the remaining ingredients in the morning and treat as a normal loaf.
That's a VERY basic method, and some googling will likely yield something more accurate. Or I can take photos of a full recipe and method from one of my books if you want something more in detail.

I'll have a look for something along these lines... Or just wait 4 more days and make focaccia in the meantime!

Usually make my own bread every week. Got just about enough flour for 1 more loaf and having a hard time finding some. Gonna go on the hunt in the little newsagents around here tomorrow.

Is there a good ratio I could follow somewhere?

To slow it down use 6 parts water to 10 parts flour when feeding it

chocolate rye cookies

Pray do tell us more...

1 version:
https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/whiskey-and-rye-chocolate-chip-cookies
But 1cup Rye flour, 1.5 cup AP.

The other is Tartine's rye salt chocolate.

I prefer the first. You can really pile in the rye flour, I've put 1.5:1 without too much destruction of cookieness. Definitely needs a good fridge rest though.

Ex? He still runs Brickhouse, I thought?

Does dried yeast stop working / go off? I tried to make pizza dough this morning, and nothing has risen after 4+ hours.

I guess the flour could be a bit old too - I did find it in a tub at the bottom of the cupboard.

Active or instant? Both can get less potent after a couple of months.

The dried active stuff.

I just checked the dates on it - July 2017 is possibly a bit old, I admit.

Ah well - another week and my latest starter will be good to go*

* i.e. forget about / ignore, and allow to turn into prison hooch.

I got some from 2013! I think you need to give it some sugar and warm water to get it going. It's rising now, but much more slowly than usual

There's a banging poolish recipe with overnight proof in Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast.

Can post whole recipe if anyone is interested

1 Attachment

Opposite page

1 Attachment

I offered, but relished no-one taking up the offer. Good effort, lol.

Fuck it lets bake through this book. Like a bread club, everyone baking the same thing at the same time

Bread Club sign-up

1. Bainbridge
   

Where on earth are people finding flour these days??!?! argh.

From shipton mills site:

1 Attachment

The great fixeh bake off?

Up for bread club when I source some flour

seriously. this.

i'm hoping all this panic buying ends at some point?

or someone on here with intimate knowledge of the shops' flour restocking schedule surfaces ...

They had to shut the whole business following some challenges with landlords towards the end of last year

I'll give Noel Fielding a call, I hear he's free.