Bread

Ive tried to make bread a few times, tend to have problems with yeast.

Got a tin of this stuff, always comes out tasting too yeasty but having barely risen.

Is this stuff just crap, or is there a knack to it?

Can't say without more details but try

• leaving it somewhere warmer to rise (but not too warm obviously)
  
• allowing it to rise for longer
  
• making a sponge before you make the rest of the dough
  
• using fresh yeast
  
• adding a bit of sugar to boost yeast activity
  
• HTFU
  
  

Here's some advice I gave to some other geezer on another board

try making a sponge (with just 1/2tsp yeast, couple of tbsps flour and enough warm water to make it into a sloppy liquidy type thing) first, leaving that to ferment in a warm place for a few hours or even overnight in the fridge*,

then add the sponge and another 1/2tsp yeast to your usual amount of flour, plus any additional warm water required to get it to the right consistency.

Rather than kneading, gently stretch and fold the bread (fold top to bottom, stretch, botom to top, stretch, left to right, stretch, righ to left etc as if you were wrapping up a parcel if you see what I mean) for a couple of minutes. I think 10 minutes of kneading is a bit excessive and gives me heavy bread

Again leave in a warm place for a few hours so it can rise, or overnight in the fridge if necessary,

shape it then leave to prove in your baking tin or on a baking tray, warm place again, few hours or overnight in the fridge,

then bake - I do a high temp for the first few mins to increase the CO2 bubble expansion rate (in other words to make it rise quickly) then turn down to the usual temp for the rest of the time

Oh and I forgot to add, you want your dough to be as wet as possible while still handleable.

It's fucking annoying and difficult trying to handle very wet dough because it tends to try to stick to your fingers and anything else it touches.

But on the plus side, you will end up with a lighter texture and bigger air bubbles in your bread.

*any time you put dough in the fridge allow it to warm up to room temp before doing anything with it