Bread

Pretty good!

Cheeky malty boi

1 Attachment

First attempt using a Poolish, amateur shaping but turned out ok

1 Attachment

Good to be back in the groove

Interesting post on using potato yeast if you can't get commercial stuff or don't want to do sourdough.

https://practicalselfreliance.com/potato-yeast-starter/

Cool, might give that a go!

Did this using the no knead recipe but entirely missed that I was using wholemeal flour. Still tasty but a bit dense. Any suggestions on how to change the recipe for wholemeal flour?

2 Attachments

Does the higher density represent lower nutritional value? Just wondering.

Just conjecture, but wouldn't denser mean more everything (such as carbs) per slice? Would that alter or affect the gluten content?

@aggi thought you could use a no knead recipe with whole meal but needs to autolayse longer.

Still have ecopies of the bread books offered ages ago, if anyone wants.

Interesting, would also think 'more' with a denser loaf but don't know if that's bad or not.
Is gluten turning a corner on it's reputation these days?

My wife has re-started baking and might be interested in the books, which ones do you have?

It's just complicated. Gluten isn't bad or good. Some people are intolerant and they prefer not to eat it, some people are coeliac and absolutely can't have even a tiny bit - I don't disagree with or deny either of those statements.
However, lots of people have problems with bread and simply assume the problem is gluten rather than with a particular type of bread. Simply, there are many factors involved. As I've typed this out, I'm realising I'm too tired to go into depth but the short version would be: well made bread, with slow fermentation, good quality flour, that is not over-mixed (over-mixing can result in bread that is harder to digest), and not full of improvers and other crap is very different to mass produced bread. And that difference often isn't taken into account in favour of simply blaming gluten.

Edit: I'd also add that bread used to be favoured as a main staple of our diets - along with many other grain based sources of carbohydrate - but that doesn't seem to be the case any more.

Yeah I realize that it’s neither good nor bad, just wondering if the gluten free craze is cooling. We have only bought decent bakery bread since forever, before that I was raised on homemade, though not slow fermented breads.

Oh, and thanks for the thoughtful reply!

What @nefarious said - there is a huge difference between home made and store bought. Even the supermarket bakery baked bread is just frozen dough shoved into an oven on site.

You're going to see different books in Canada but the US books that I have own that I rate highly are:

Beard on Bread by James Beard - it may no longer be in print but I have my Grandfather's copy (with his handwritten notes) and I used that to learn to bake bread many, many years ago. It's not nearly as complete as more modern books focusing more on recipes than techniques. Quite old school.

Baking Artisan Bread: 10 Expert Formulas for Baking Better Bread at Home by Ciril Hitz - This is a really good introduction to baking and what works / doesn't work when making bread. Good simple concepts well explained and really well written techniques with lots of good pics. I've used it quite a bit and the pizza dough recipe is really good.

Could have been worse I suppose. Tastes pretty decent in fairness

DM you the list when am at the computer

Interesting little interview in Wired with the director of the Washington State University's Bread Lab, using the boom in at-home baking as a hook: https://www.wired.com/story/bread-boom-science-stephen-jones/

I'd not visited the lab's website before, but they've got a lot of interesting stuff up on there as well (and a fairly active Instagram account): http://thebreadlab.wsu.edu/

From my enforced slave labour as a baker, well in a family bakery, we had proving ovens that we put the bread in to speed the mix. Other breads, we would make the dough (bag of flour, block of yeast, buckets of tap water and a certain weigh of salt. In the mix then, leave it double in size while still in the mixer bowl, then mix again (now I know as knocking back) till back to roughly the original size and put the dough on a tray then proof overnight with the proving oven doors open, and then turn ovens on first thing and put these breads in to bake when the oven were warm. Had to be super careful to not be rough with the trays as the bread wouldn't rise in the oven. Like the bubbles had burst.

Then this is modern bread https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-shocking-truth-about-bread-413156.html

What happens if I use plain flour instead of strong white? I'm running out of everything but need to clear out my cupboards

Yeah, good old Chorleywood Baking Process! Your family business' method is a world apart.

It's funny when you explain the difference to people - a loaf of sourdough might take 3 days from preferment, to dough, to bread, compared to a 90 minute turnaround for CBP sliced white.

It'll work, but it'll just be different. It might struggle to hold much water or hold its shape. Definitely works though. Used it loads of times when in a pinch.

My dad fancied being a baker for a while, his kids were slave labour. We did get to eat vast quantities of white nutella.

The overnight proved bread was for Italian customers only, under the counter sort of thing. Learnt to make egg custards with curdled milk make the best egg custards. Makes amazing custard too. Freshly fried doughnuts, no sugar or filling. Singe your fingers and mouth but the crunchy fluffy mix was amazing.

Soda bread?

Freshly fried doughnuts

Yeasted, fried doughnuts are the king of doughnuts. Interesting tekkers on the milk too!