www.sausagemaking.org

I know that the in thing is to be making sour-dough, ciabatta and the like - anything but a sliced white sandwich loaf, but there's times when it's nice to have just a plain white slice of bread. I like it for toast, bacon butties and cheese and pickle sarnies in particular.

I've always used a variant of my 'Daily Bread' recipe for this purpose. However, I'm on a diet and want to reduce the amount of oil I use, but still have a loaf that has good keeping qualities.

I stumbled across hat I think mat be the answer online: a Water Roux or Tangzhong Roux. It's a simple process that makes a very light loaf that has good keeping qualitites.

My base recipe (In baker's percentages) was:

White Bread Flour 100%
water 64%
'Instant' dried yeast 1.4% (The stuff you mix in with the flour and don't need to rehydrate)
Salt 1.4%
Veg oil 3%

In real life, for two small loaves:

500gm flour
320gm water
7gm yeast
7gm salt
1T Oil

It's the method that varies.
Take 5% of the flour from the 500gm and mix it with 5 times its weight in water taken from the 320gm. That's 25gm of flour and 125gm water, mixed and then heated to 65°C (149°F). I did this in the microwave. You then proceed as normal adding the roux with the rest of the water after checking that they're not too hot.
Being a pendant, I weighed my bowl of flour and water pre and post microwave and made up the 5gm loss with water.

Has anyone any experiences to share of this method?

Phil

I can't add anything to your thread Phil, but it sounds interesting and I too love a good plain white bread most of the time.

Please try it Dan. I'd appreciate the feedback before changing my recipes - in particular the Wheels rolls recipe.

Phil

Hi Phil, will give this ago, I think they use a similar technique for some of the far eastern bread, dont change "The Wheels Rolls" recipe, i still use the original with4 tbsp oil, i do now do one with a 10% of Hovis granary bread mix, so 540 grams bread flour to 60 grams hovis, comes up really well, fools me into thinking I am eating healthly!:-
I did try the technique you are on about a while back and was not too impressed but as said there is sometimes you just want a good quality plain white loaf.
Regards
Gary.
ps will give feed back will try this week, forgot to say, i tried dividing the dough into 3, folding them and then putting them into the loaf tin, (forgot what they call the method), but the difference in texture when slicing the loaf is a revelation, very impressed.

I've yet to try that; it's the way that supermarket sliced bread's made, if I remember correctly.

I reduced the oil in the rolls recipe due to being on a diet. There's no doubt that there's something about the high fat content in the original that satisfies though.

Phil

wheels wrote: There's no doubt that there's something about the high fat content in the original that satisfies though.

Phil

Indeed. Try using home rendered lard instead of oil or butter (and even add pork scratchings into the mix to be really naughty). Philip

wheels wrote:I reduced the oil in the rolls recipe due to being on a diet.

Phil

Swing Swang wrote:Indeed. Try using home rendered lard instead of oil or butter (and even add pork scratchings into the mix to be really naughty). Philip

Now, you're 'aving a laugh!

Probably, but here's the recipe!
(Which I'd be happy to translate if needed)

http://nacozinhadamargo.blogspot.co.uk/ ... resmo.html

Oh boy, that looks good. Bread with bacon. Could anything be better?

Phil

A quick translation would be fab...

A translation would be great, but in the meantime, I noticed that you can select the language on the RH side of the page.

HTH

Phil

I've tidied up the machine translation a little and added my own comments in brackets

Ingredients:
30 g bread yeast (or 2 tablespoons of dry granular yeast)
2 cup (200ml) milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 dessertspoon salt (I use 1-1.5 teaspoons)
3 eggs
1 cup (200ml) of rendered fat drained from preparing the pork scratchings
500g plain wheat flour


Start by making the filling:
Place in a pan, 1/2 cup oil, 500 grams of finely chopped bacon rind (note ‘toucinho’ can refer to salted backfat similar to lardo, salted belly, or even raw fat/skin – any of these works well, the important thing is to have the skin in the mix and render down the fat so that you are left with crackling – I prefer the raw skin/fat version) with 1 teaspoon salt. Fry and stir occasionally. When gold and dry, remove from heat. Drain the fat from the pan and reserve for use in the bread dough. In the same pan lightly fry 2 garlic (the recipe suggests whole heads of garlic – I suggest that 2 cloves is more appropriate) mixed with 1/2 chopped onion until a lightly golden brown. Stir in the previously prepared crackling, ensuring it is well coated. Salt to taste. Turn off the heat, sprinkle with parsley (I never bother), let cool and reserve

Then the bread dough:
Beat everything in a blender except the crackling and flour. Pour into a bowl, add the flour gradually and knead well. Let rise until doubled in volume. Roll out, add half of the filling, and roll the bread (ie Swiss-roll fashion). Brush with egg yolk. Sprinkle the rest of the pork rind/cracklings over the bread. Let rise again. Bake in preheated oven until golden brown.

(Comment – there is always a danger of burning the cracklings that get sprinkled on the top – personally I like to keep them all inside the bread)

Thanks for the translation and Apollo for the tardy reply. Some poor manual handling resulted in a week lost in pain and some serious pain mess, as well as three days in hospital....

Not bad for a H&S professional!

I made the warburton recipe above last night into rolls, trying them tonight. We're in an egg drought at the moment so can't try the other recipe yet.

Again, thanks for the translation

I must admit to my utter admiration for you all! After numerous attempts to make a decent loaf of bread, and more failures than successes, I gave in and bought another breadmaker on Monday! I have only made two loaves so far but the taste, lightness and quality of the bread proves to me that this is the way to go - for me, anyway.

My dad makes a superb wholemeal bread using a bread-maker to mix/knead the dough and then cooking it in the oven.

Phil