Bread making corner

[Ricard with an H]

350 ml of water gives a nice wet dough though it's always dependent on the flour, you'll,perhaps notice that most recipes use 300ml of water for the 500 grams of flour. This makes an easy to handle dough but not a very nice bread.

I recommend you try plain flour just once, the loaf I made yesterday was 50/50 malted flour from Shipton mill and Aldi Plain flour. I got a lovely light bread that had a lot of oven spring inside the makeshift cloche.

Other than the internet you have been the first persons I could communicate with on the use of a cloche and it's been positive so thank you.

[Pawty]

Hi Richard,

Glad the cloche worked. Ours isn't a great fit but it does the job.

Always happy to talk bread - although it's mr Pawty who the experert cook.

Very occasionally he uses a poolish dough - need a lot of time! Very wet with folding rather than kneeding (good description in flour, water, salt, yeast by Ken Fawkish). Although this is a sibling thing where he and his brother have 'bread off'! It's always a competition.....

Pawty

[Ricard with an H]

It's good to share with a fellow-obsessive. I have yet to perfect many techniques, it took two years for a good sourdough. The polish method seems to emulate sourdough and in fact some artisan bakers claim they are making sourdough when in fact they started the ferment with a modern yeast.

I'm not altogether sure I'm able to see the point other than for the timing point where you have a viable dough, or part-dough first thing in the morning though I must make this my next project.

[Geoff]

There was mention of Canadian flour earlier, I thought almost all strong flour was American much of it Canadian. I remember watching ships on the Manchester Ship Canal in my youth bringing it from Canada to the big mills. Went to check and found flour does not show country of origin on the bags, I wonder why.

[Ricard with an H]

From what I've been taught and from what I read in what I call my bible, all EXTRA STRONG flour come from Canada. Extra strong has 14% protein. Strong has 11 to 12%. I would be surprised if the USA can't grow hard wheat.

The extra strong flour is milled from what is termed hard wheat, because of our climate we can only grow soft wheat.

If you study all the USA bread baking stuff they use what they call "General purpose flour". I think its plain flour and I think us being pushed into using strong flour is a shame when popular flours from France are only 11 to 12% protein.

Its to do with the assumption that us Brits want bread like that made by the Chorleywood process, small holes to hold the marmalade in place. With a high gluten flour you need more CO2 to force bubbles into the stronger gluten structure.

The recipe by the American Ken Fawkish uses 78% hydration and with general purpose flour. This allows more fermentation and less resistance to the CO2 so you get large holes like the French like it.

[Ricard with an H]

French T55 flour is 10% protein and around £2.50 a kilo. (I didn't think we had a trade embargo, someone is having a laugh at our expense) Aldi plain flour is 9.4% protein and a lot cheaper. T55 is recommended for light and airy bread and baguettes because its a lighter flour and more extensible than high protein flours.

I have T55 and did a comparison with Aldi plain flour and Co-op plain, Ill go for Aldi or any other plain flour other than for making pizza dough if you want to stretch it without it tearing though rolling it out after using plain flour seems good to me.

[Colin2016]

Had bread all set to go into the oven yesterday when Doris (storm) turned up and knocked the power out.

[Ricard with an H]

Oh buxxer, I hope you didn't throw the dough away. Leaving excess or old dough in the fridge is a technique used by bread bakers to achieve flavour though it's something I read about rather than have experienced.

Sliding to one side, when I posted this thread it was intended to as a helping hand for those struggling, I hope this isn't the case but this thread has helped me a lot by pushing me into unworked territory. The last two loaves I baked were very good and as a result of both Geoff comments and Pawty plus the Mr Pawty technique.

I did a 72% hydration dough when my target is 78% hydration but dough hydrated at this level is difficult, sort of making water stand up. I flopped my very wet dough into the makeshift baking cloche, put the lid on and baked it and it was perfect.

I have to tell you that I have quite a lot of bread baking reading that doesn't get me anywhere where I want to be but nice nice photo's and I wouldn't dream of naming names publicly.

[Colin2016]

All turn out ok just waited till power game on 5 hours latter. Wasn't sure I could put this in the fridge so left it on the table and hoped for the best.

[Ricard with an H]

I have now managed two 78% hydrations, for me this an achievement. The bread was lovely and light, and moist the next day. I hope I can do this with a sourdough bread. Sourdough ferments partly digest the gluten and this is why people who are gluten sensitive can often tolerate a sourdough bread, This part digesting means the loaves tend towards collapsing, once again it'll be a technique I need to master. I have been making good sourdough for two years though never as good as a small Cardigan bakery makes.

I'm guessing that some techniques include mixing the sourdough ferment with a yeast ferment or adding a bit of yeast or other skulduggery that defeats the purpose of making sourdough bread. My mentor calls this bread Psuedodough though as a baker he is a fundamentalist.

Check out Andrew at Bread Matters, or Scotland the Bread, Andrew Whitley is an evangelist.

[Geoff]

Did you watch sourdough bread in San Francisco the other evening? http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... hat-we-eat

[Ricard with an H]

I didn't but now I will watch it and thank you Geoff.

[Ricard with an H]

I did watch this on play-back TV, it was very interesting and I must make more of an effort to look for stuff I want to watch rather than just watching what is on in front of me. I don't have much stamina for TV.

Back to bread though, something happened last week and my bread was poorly. It was the yeast. This is the second time I got caught out. Usually I just sprinkle the instant yeast into the flour though that relies on confidence the yeast is viable. This last batch of yeast was an organic type that I could only buy in a large pack compared to the usual packaging sizes. (I can't remember the volume)

The use by date was good for a year but it failed within 9 months and I did keep it in the fridge and sealed.

So this is a friendly warning, after enough years of baking that some regard me as an expert I once again proved to be a plonker.

The only way to avoid this is to always prove your yeast, a little luke warm water with a sprinkle of sugar and the yeast sprinkled on top should prove action within less than the half hour I read about. If it doesn't burst into life, bin it.

[Colin2016]

I assume sugar helps the yeast wondering what the salt does.

[Geoff]

We had pulled pork in the bread rolls with pockets that I mentioned earlier for my birthday bash yesterday. They are apparently called steamed bao buns.