Bread

It depends on hydration and the yeast; for high-hydration sourdoughs I just bring the mix together and then let time and water do a lot of the work of gluten formation - stretching and folding throughout the bulk proof seems to give me a good enough loaf. I am lazy though - for yeasted doughs etc I tend to bung them in my breadmaker on the dough setting, but if doing it by hand it would be more like 10 minutes to bring everything together.

I should have been thankful, the retarded ones came out even worse!

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Pff, those look good enough to me - some pretty perfectionist standards there! Mine should probably have had a longer second proof but I couldn't be arsed; the shaping on the baton loaf wasn't brilliant either. OTOH a liberal dusting of the banneton with rye seems to have done the trick on the sticking front.

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Has anyone bought wholemeal flour online recently? I’m drawing a blank everywhere

Retarded on left, ambient on right.
While they’re both a bit dense, you can definitely see the improved aeration on the retarded one. Think the dough went over on the bulk, bit too much water and it didn’t get any folds as I mixed and just left overnight. The ambient on the right is also under proved.

Being as lazy as possible isn’t always optimum for bread making.

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Recipe share please. They look amazing!

@lowbrows That's just a lethal pile of bread. I'd just be sitting there with good butter munching away.

@nefarious They look shit, I'll ride by you can chuck a couple loaves out of the window. Save you from them.

Already distributed to the neighbours. We uphold high standards in this flat!

As Bruce Lee once said,
“Don’t fear the man that has baked 1000 types of loaf,
Fear the man that has baked one loaf, 1000 times.”

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Strong-Wholemeal-Artisan-Bread-Flour-10Kg/174260535376?hash=item2892bcc050:g:QH8AAOSweR1eorzG

This isn't a recommendation, but I ordered some this afternoon. I've never used them before but they're not an obviously new eBay seller, and feedback looks ok. Will know more early next week...

naan bread using sourdough starter were tonight's experiment using the pizza oven, made this morning, cooked this evening. pretty yum..

Probably should have read more on technique but was in a rush..

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At this point, I fear you're gonna sublime into the cosmos as a pot of a starter floating through the ether.

An embarrassment, it took some courage to post them for all the world to see.

If you're in London then bread ahead and the snapery are selling these

Great. Thanks

Pretzels! I used plain flour and they were good but @GoatandTricycle who posted the recipe originally used bread flour and theirs looked great too!

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/easy-h­omemade-soft-pretzels/

Bread retarders, are you cooking straight from the fridge to the oven or allowing some time to come up to room temperature first?

Straight from the fridge.

I take the bread out from the fridge when I turn on the oven, gives them about 45-60 to warm up a bit. No idea if it's better or worse though

Thanks chaps. It worked well, will be doing that more often when scheduling allows

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Contender for sexiest loaf in this thread IMO.

As for when to take out the fridge - depends on how it looks/feels. Usually take it out as the oven is preheating, but sometimes it needs a bit of encouragement beforehand so I'll do the boiled water in a bowl in the oven trick first. It's largely dependent on how it was before it went in the fridge though.

Ah, thanks man. It kind of has a daft punk helmet vibe going on. Or had. The fucker got devoured for lunch

For some reason I thought of the Luggage from the Discworld.

YESSSSSS!

A bready noob here with a question: is it ok to extend the proving time of yeasted dough without it causing problems?

I have a recipe I’ve used before with a 1 hour 30 min first prove and 45 min second, could I instead leave the first prove overnight?

You would want to do the overnight in the fridge to slow down they yeast, and possibly have the amount of yeast in the dough.

Thanks @Thrustvector! So halve the usual 10g yeast to 5g, overnight in the fridge and then do I still knead briefly and do a second prove out of the fridge before putting in the oven?