Bread Making

[jenny_haddow]

For my everyday loaf I use a 50/50 stoneground wholemeal and white flour. I like Waitrose extra strong Canadian bread flour, but Tesco's own brand produces a good loaf.

I'm lucky enough to live near Denver Mill in Norfolk where I can buy their freshly ground flour. Now that does make a nice tasting loaf of bread. and just recently I took delivery of the grain mill attachment for the Kenwood and look forward to grinding my own flour now and again. I need to find a grain supplier though.

Jen

I've just bought 3 kilos of wheat which I plan to turn into flour, life is probably too short to do this, but I'm intrigued with the whole process of culinary DIY

[Oddley]

I followed Jens advise and bought some bread improver and fresh yeast. from here.

The crust is a nice light crusty crust. The crumb is light and airy, the fresh yeast really makes a difference to the taste. The wife thought it was better than the local bakers bread.

The only real drawback, is the yeast and improver adds about 39 p a loaf, to the price. So a loaf works out at about 90p using flour from the supermarket.

[saucisson]

What is the shelf life of the fresh yeast like?

Dave

[Oddley]

From the info given to me, if kept semi vac packed and at 12� C ( in my beer fridge), it should last 14 days. If you are making 800 g loaves, about 500g flour, then using 15 g per loaf, 100g will make 6.7 loaves. If like me and buying it in 200 g lots, it will make about 13 loaves, therefore 13 days.

There is another benefit of using bread improver, and that is, it significantly reduces the proving times. The first prove only being 10 minutes long. If anybody is interested in my recipe and method for using the improver, just say and I will post it.

[saucisson]

Yes please Oddley. Probably a complete no no, but I wonder if it would freeze ?

Dave

[Oddley]

As for freezing this is what Flourbin has to say:

Fermipan bulk pack

It comes in a 500 gm. vacuum pack which once opened must be kept in an airtight container and then used in no more than a month. If using a bread maker on a daily basis, this is the way to buy yeast. Given that the equivalent price of the yeast in a small sachet equates to about 20% of the bulk pack, once you have used 100 gm. you will be in front financially, so it hardly matters if you have to throw away the last bit of the packet. Having said that, several customers have told us that they keep it inside another bag in the FREEZER. Apparently it does not go solid, so you can get it out, use a bit, & put it back in where it will last for a good 6 months. This is NOT a Flour Bin recommended course of action & we cannot be held responsible for any yeast damaged as a result of being frozen. We are just passing on tips that have been given to us by interested customers, for which we are very grateful!

Here.

CRUSTY BREAD

500 g - 100% Flour
Of flour
9 g - 1.75 % Salt
5 g - 1% Improver
5 g - 1% Fat (optimal)
15 g - 3 %Yeast (Fresh)
285 g - 57 % Water + or - Dough temp approx 29� C

BROWN/ WHOLEMEAL TYPE BREAD

500 g - 100 % Flour
Of flour
9 g - 1.75 % Salt
10 g - 2 % Improver
5 g - 1 % Fat
17 g - 3.5 % Yeast (fresh)
300 g - 60 % Water + or - Dough temp approx 29� C

METHOD
1. Add all dry ingredients first, then the water, lastly the yeast
2. Mix in the Kenwood for 5 minutes.
3. Rest for 5 minutes.
4. Mix for another 5 minutes.
5. Mould and shape into a ball and rest for 5 minutes.
6. Scale to your usual sizes and mould to shape required and place in tins or on trays.
7. Place in a warm place and allow to double in size. About 35 minutes (Tip put uncovered in an oven with a tray of boiling water beneath it.) This will give the bread the correct temperature to rise and stop your bread ‘skinning’ up.
8. Ensure your oven is at the required temperature eg: gas mark 9 for the first 5 minutes then gas mark 7 for 10 minutes then gas mark 6 for 10 minutes then gas mark 5 for about 10 minutes. (Squirt water in the oven every 1 minute for five minutes this helps with oven spring and gives a better crust)

*Note: dough temperature is particularly important, to work out the required water temperature use the
following formula: Double required dough temperature, minus the flour temp = the required water temp.

e.g.(Flour = 23c in this example) Dough temp 29 x 2 = 58 minus flour 23 = required water temp of 35c

It is very important that you get the tempreture of the dough right, by using the formula provided, follow the rest of the method as close as you can, for the best results.

[saucisson]

Thanks! I might try freezing some to see how it compares then.

Dave

[wheels]

Oddley

As I recall, when I was at school, we added a crushed vitamin c tablet to bread dough to get a quicker rise.

If you check out this commercial improver it contains:

Wheat Flour, Dextrose, Emulsifier: E472(e), Vegetable Oil, Flour Improver - E300.

So it's roughly Flour, Sugar, Oil and Vit C along with E472e which is, according to the web, "prepared from esters of glycerol (see E422) with tartaric acid (E334)" - anti freeze and lemon juice?

I'm not trying to be facetious just trying to illustrate that the same effect may be able to be achieved more cheaply using things that we already have about the house - but ignore the antifreeze. It's worth a play.

I make soft rolls using 600g Flour, 120ml hot water, 300ml semi-skimmed milk, 4 tbsp oil, 1.5 tsp salt and 7g easy blend yeast. For a soft crust I don't spray when cooking and cook at 180C until lightly browned - these are very light in texture and have good keeping qualities.



I prefer crusty bread but find it a pain to bake every day.

Phil

(edited at 01.31 on 28 June 2008 'cos, like an idiot, I said that the liquid was water instead of milk and water mixed!)

[saucisson]

Not only good looking bread, but a very nice photo Phil.

[johnfb]

Phil
those rolls look a million times better than mine.
I'm not happy about that...

I am going to try this recipe

I think I am trying every recipe you come up with at this stage

[Oddley]

I'm glad you bought this up. I have been using ascorbic acid powder for some time and it does give a significant improvement, but not as good as the commercially bought improver.

The ingredients for the improver I bought were:

THE INGREDIENTS IN THIS IMPROVER ARE COMPLETELY NATURAL - ENZYME ACTIVE SOYA - MILK POWDER - VEGETABLE OIL - ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C) - E472c (EMULSIFIER-Citric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids) E921 (NATURALLY OCCURING ENZYME-L-cysteine hydrochloride monohydrate).

most of the improver ingredients can be bought and with experimentation and some research an acceptable improver could be made. For instance here they talk about 60 ppm of ascorbic acid to 40 ppm of L-cysteine as being the optimum amount for these two chemicals.

L-Cysteine (60:40 ppm. of weight flour) had maximum specific bread volume, 3 . 3.4297 em Ig., and good over all acceptance. Adding developed dough improver (60:40ppm.) improved wheat bread quality but it was not significantly difference from commercial dough improver (U-99).

L-Cysteine can be bought here.

But texture and other consideration have to be accounted for.This .pdf gives some guidance

Optional Ingredients
• Soya flour (0.5 to 1%), will improve crust, colour, volume and softness
• Malt flour (0.2%), will improve crust colour, volume and softness
• Skimmed milk powder (2%) will improve crust colour and taste
• Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to give good crumb structure, volume and softness
• Extra fat will give a tender crust and softer crumb.

So all in all yes you are right, but at the moment I just can't be bothered. If someone else decides too, I would be very interested in the outcome.

[wheels]

Thanks Oddley,
I'm trying to improve the quality of my food photos but it's not always easy to cook and take pictures at the same time!
These are good in a 'burger bun' sort of way but I prefer the 'pukka' type of bread in your photo myself. Trouble is that the 3 women in this house disagree!

John
I forgot to mention: make these in a food mixer as at 70% hydration, plus the oil, they are very sticky if you do it by hand. I give them 2 lots of 5 mins kneeding in the kenwood chef. (Or 10mins in one go if you have a machine that doesn't need a service!). The full method (but not this recipe, yet) is here. The pictured rolls are 85g before cooking.

Phil

[johnfb]

A Kenwood...it's about the only piece of machinery I don't own.
I do all my kneading by hand so these will be fairly sticky for me.
But I'll give it a go anyway, no matter what recipe I use I usually get covered in flour.
I have a food processor but the blade is a bit aggressive so I dont think I could use it for bread dough making.
Maybe I should ask the wife for a kenwood mixer mmmmmm...

[wheels]

John

Tell her I said she's got to let you get one! There's plenty on ebay.
Phil

[saucisson]

I give them 2 lots of 5 mins kneeding in the kenwood chef. (Or 10mins in one go if you have a machine that doesn't need a service!).

Phil

What's wrong with it Phil? I thought I'd bought a dud off ebay but after advise from here it has been going strong for several years now...

Dave