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smug thread alert: Over xmas I MADE some bread
hi guys. HNY to you all. unless you're a baker of course, in which case you're about to go out of business.
i decided one day last week that i would make some bread. turns out its pretty piss easy to make, but quite hard to make right. so i need your tips and secrets. heres what i did:
500g of granary bread flour
30g yeast ("instant yeast")
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
mix all together. then leave for an hourish is warm place. then knead and put back in warm place for another hour. then cook in hot oven for 10 mins and then warm oven for about 30 mins.
the bread tasted lovely, but it was very flat and maybe the crust was a bit thick. how can i make it more...loafy? made another loaf which i left over night in the fridge before baking - came out even flatter.
can you make bread? cheers.
no water?
just flour and yeast?
yes water
tepid water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529AgcC7OdY
and to make it rise more i have to do what?
i'm guessing you're no expert
get the proper yeast
use extra strong strong flour
knead like a bastard
so there was a full class on how to make a fruit salad?
that's all manner of brilliant.
sometimes pressing the right reply button is just too much.
so it turns out, it was in the right place all along.
Did you not go to school?
We had making milkshake as lesson 1, and stir-fry as lesson 2 (basically cooked vegetable salad).
It's all about weighing, measuing and using knives. Plenty of kids will have never seen a jug or know how to use it.
We had a lesson on making a sandwich!
Some tips of the top of my head
check what yeast you're using. Some of the dried stuff needs to be 'activated' in the water for a few minutes before you combine it with everything else. (The River Cottage book says there's no discernable difference between the live and dried yeast reeeeeally.)
Just before putting the dough in the oven, give it a couple of deepish slashes with a sharp knife along the top, this lets the crust expand a bit whilst cooking and gives you a nicer looking loaf.
Another good tip is to fill a roasting tin with boiling water and put that in the oven as well. It steams up the oven and helps produce a better crust (pro bakers use steam ovens). Spray the dough with some water as well just before putting it in the oven.
tip: if you go to any large supermarket with a proper bakery
and ask them for yeast, they'll usually give you a big lump of proper actual live yeast for free. this will obvs be better than the instant stuff
i wont be doing that.
but i did feel that the yeast was the component that was letting me down.
why not?
too emabarrasing.
plus, i dont live near a proper supermarket.
best tip
buy a breadmaker. consistent results, much easier, very tasty bread. sure it's fun to make it from scratch but bread makers are good.
Men you can't trust:
1= Gypsies
1= Carnies
3. Lord Archer
4. Men who bake bread
It’s because every man who ever kneaded a loaf at Christmas time wears a turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up w./ snifter of port sitting within arms reach. Repulsive image.
i had on some tracksuit bottoms and a comfy t-shirt.
30g of yeast? That sounds like a lot.
I only use 7g. I make my own bread all the time. It’s one of the most satisfying things you can do in a kitchen. I got a River Cottage book on breadmaking for Christmas, now that’s what I call smug.
I make my own pizzas now
and I'm starting to appreciate the smell of my own farts
you sound like an expert.
what is your basic bread recipe?
I can't remember off the top of my head sorry
I can never remember weights and measurements, as expressed in the "what do you always forget?" thread that made Monday such a great day.
like pizzary sort of doughy?
For some reason I can remember pizza dough
It's something like 500g of flour (for actual pizza I'd use 400g of strong white bread flour and 100g semolina, but that's just me being a ponce), 320g of water (weigh your water btw, don't just use a measuring jug - weighing is more accurate), one 7g sachet of yeast, half a tablespoon of golden caster sugar and half a tablespoon of salt. Knead if for about 15-20 minutes untill it's smooth and elasticy and let it rise untill it's about doubled in size (usually about an hour) then 'knock it back' and knead it again. Then roll it out into your pizza bases, dust them with semolina flour, leave them for about 10 minutes, top with whatever you like and bake them in an oven on full-whack top heat for 10-12 minutes.
I can get about 4 medium sized pizzas out of that. Or you could just do that but mould it into a loaf shape and bake it for bread.
mould? mold? SHAPE
Or double 00 if you want to be even more poncey
30g of yeast sounds like a lot
Too much can make the bread collapse.
Other tips, start with white flour (Strong) until you are good at making bread. White is more likely to rise well and evenly. Second, kneed the fuck out of it, for ages, 20 minutes or more.
ps. Did you just leave it for an hour or did you leave it to rise?
20 mins of kneading?
my hands couldnt take it. the recipe said 5.
does the kneading really make a difference then?
and less yeast? how much say, per 100g?
I think it's usually one sachet for about 500g of flour, and one sachet is about 6-7g
But it depends on what yeast you are using. The recipe on the side of the yeast box would probably be a decent basic one to follow.
Kneading does make the difference. Next time you make bread, knead it for 5 mins and then pull the dough apart, it will probably just rip. Then knead it for longer and try to pull it apart, the dough will stretch quite a lot before it rips. The stretchyness is what you are aiming for. This is he first kneading. I don't think the second kneading is so important, so can be shorter.
Why did the baker have brown hands?
i hope this isnt a racist joke
Cos he kneaded a shit...
surely!
BREADSMASH
nice.
Get some beer in that bread
When you leave the dough to rest
make sure it's roughly doubled in size before you do anything more with it. Too soon and there won't be enough yeast going for the second rise.
As other people have suggested, slashing the top before baking will help the loaf open out.