Kitchen Garden Forum

Honestly Robo, if you have what it takes to grow vegetable you can make good bread with your bare hands though with arthritic changes having a a mixer or machine does help. Right now I'm eating two days old bread wit nice Irish butter a bowl of soup. What could be better ? Just cooled bread is better.

Bread is water, flour and yeast. Or, in the case of sourdough just water and flour. Sourdough doesn't really work with a mixer or machine. Seeds add flavour and nutrient. Go on-go-on.

Hi,

The magimix attachment I use is the plastic white paddle thing - not a true bread mixing attachment. The key is to make it a bit wetter than you think it should be - then leave it alone to do its thing. It'll fill the entire magimix bowl providing its warm enough! It'll look a bit flat after you've bashed it back a bit ( but not too much bashing). Leave it on tray for 20 mins or so, before going in the oven ( or longer if like me you forget you're making bread for the second time that day) - you'll be amazed at how much rise you'll get!

As Richard say's - experiment and do what suits you and your tastes - what the worse that can happen!

I would add that mr Pawty follows the magimix method up until you tip the mix out. After hitting back he places into a bread basket to get those lovely circles. He then turns it out and bakes it in a round oven terracotta pot with the lid on for 30 min (I think) then takes the lid off and bakes for another 15 min (lower temp). Soft in the middle, lovely crispy outside.

Home made pizza tonight - same method but made before going to work at 8am - left in the magimix bowl and placed on the windowsill. Just needs stretching out. Sooo easy - difficult part is deciding what to put on it!

Pawty

Fantastic, thank you, have a bloke-style huggy.

I have to tell you about the dough I threw away because I didn't want to waste energy baking it when I knew it wasnt viable. It doesn't compost easily and forms a horrible slimed mass, I didn't want to send it to landfill so it had to go into the food-waste composter. Lots of greenery added later and it disappeared.

I think there is going to be a lot of well fed fat birds this winter

Maybe we can get Paul Hollywood to contribute to this thread?

Just a thought! Never really see what he uses.

I have his book, it's all lovely photos and lots of different ways of making the same thing that is far too simplistic.

For example: one of his breads uses butter and 270 ml of water to 500 grams of flour. For the same recipe I use no butter and 340 ml water to achieve a nicer bread. Ok, this may be a matter of taste or opinion but as a baker producing a book he should be elaborating on why.

I suppose after two courses, the last one being over two days, I had a better opportunity to fiddle with recipes.

But take the ingredients list for the recipe by Pawty, she uses what she describes as, "A bit more than half a pint". Half a pint is 300 ml. Getting the dough hydration correct is essential.

I don't do pints or cups measure, I was taught via metric and always weigh my water because it's more accurate. 300ml of water weigh 300 grams so Pawtys "Just over half a pint" would weigh anywhere between 300 grams and maybe 340'grams. The difference makes a difference.

I have found that double, or even triple bagging bread in the freezer slows or stops it becoming frosbitten. The originator of the idea in my case was the owner of what was called Leigh's Pyclets n Nottingham. They were the artisan bakers at the time of just pyclets, they froze them for the purpose of getting ahead of demand but found conventional methods dehydrated the pyclets whereas multiple bagging slowed or stopped the effect. No science was involved, just the opinion of customers.

Just testing some very different breads from, I think, Waitrose, maybe Sainsbury. She isn't here right now so I'll confirm later.

This is bread made with seeds and fruit, no sugar, no wheat no gmo, no flour,, no yeast, no hg fats, colours, attitives or other nonesense. Made in Poland and very delicious.

I can't stop.

About bread making machines, I use one all the time so far, but just to make yeasted wheat dough. In the case of my machine which is Panasonic from almost twenty years ago at £100 s presumably it was respectable.

Hen I make dough by hand the bread is always better, I finally found my machine in its various dough only making program does not head the dough enough.

For those o you who have never neaded your dough by hand, maybe because of an aversion to the stickiness and messiness, you need to complete this procedure at least once so you at least know what dough should feel like when it's been neaded enough. It's no longer sticky and comes together assuming a correct level of hydration and wetter is better is a good mantra.

The last few times I made dough in my machine I handled it rather than just tipping it, shaping it and either bunging it in a tin or a former. Handling it told me the doughnstill needed more working.

Made my first loaf yesterday using gadget on the food mixer & came across this topic. Very please with the result. Only used cheap Tesco flour will be interesting to see what using strong flour (what ever that is) will be like.

Hi Colin. Strong flour has a higher protein and stronger gluten but if you don't knead your dough to form the gluten properly then you won't get the benefit of trapping the gas bubbles that are formed whilst the yeast is fermenting. I have made good bread with plain flour and though I have yet to buy some the expensive French flours have a lower protein and gluten.

I just realised my spell checker has been faffing about and got confused by the difference between needing and kneading. (Smile)

Most bread baking books don't elaborate about kneading the dough, they say things like, "Knead for ten minutes" You need to knead until it all holds together and you can stretch a sort-of window pane of super thin dough and that is how you'll be able to make good pizza base. If there isn't enough gluten or if you haven't kneaded enough the dough won't stretch, it'll break.

Try plain flour for baguettes and focaccia as well as the obvious ciabatta but your dough needs to be so wet it'll be hard to handle at 68% or more hydration. Different flours respond differently to hydration so you have to get a feel for things.

Wetter the better.

Thanks for the explanation & comments Richard with an H.

Seems like we are on the same wave length, I was looking at making pizza dough & ciabatta.

As for “wetter the better” does this apply to the red stuff in the glass on the side of the worktop? (lol).

No water in the red stuff, please.

Colin, really-really, try plain flour for pizza and ciabatta then do the same recipe with strong flour and get used to throwing bread or whatever away. Even simple white bread type baking depends on our technique.

Pizza dough is an art form, getting the dough just right so it stretches nice and thin without tearing is down to the quality of the flour and your kneading. I have yet to be happy with my pizza dough after many years prior to tuition and several years since tuition sessions.

My guru uses a recipe that uses different flours to produce the perfect pizza though I have yet to try it because I'm still practicing to get other breads correct. These are his ingredients but I can't give you quantities because of official secrets agreements.

Maize
buckwheat
Brown rice
tapioca
chestnut (All in flour form)

All these can be bought as flour but not this far west though I'm sure the internet can solve that problem, just try to make a decent pizza with store-bought flour first.

I didn't warn you, this is the second time in five years of baking good bread that I got the doldrums. Doldrums is when you make bread that isn't up to your standard or rather the standard you have achieved then gone backwards.

Makes lots of breadcrumbs and I must research recipes using breadcrumbs because simple chicken fillets, floured, wiped in beaten egg then pressed into breadcrumbs lifts the whole thing.

Right now I have a lot of breadcrumbs in the freezer. Make sure you bake you bake the moisture out after the shredder.

There isn't any help for this phenomena, all the people I met on the two courses I went on admitted to the doldrums.

Do as I suggest, not as I do. (Pathetic smile)

THE DOLDRUMS ARE OVER.

I started making good bread again, first I blamed it on cheap flour. I like to test my regular breads by using cheap Aldi flour rather than flours from specialist millers that produce organic and stone ground together with some excellent blends and specialist flours, to be honest I still make good breads with cheap flour though I like to think I can the difference by at least smell.

So, the doldrums, what was that about. I use two methods of baking. First I used our top oven with a stone placed just above the bottom, the top oven has bottom heat and I find this to be the best way to bake bread. In the main oven I have found that the forced hot air whilst baking the bread to a nice crust leaves the middle doughy. Ok, less heat but then I get an insipid bread.

Also, as I mentioned before, my machine does not complete the kneading process quite as good as kneading by hand.