I love making my own bread, it's very rewarding, usually. Sometimes the loaves I make are too dense though and I don't like them. I was chatting to my friend Helen about bread recently and she suggested that wehre I was going wrong was using sub-standard flour. So in a bid to improve my results I'm off the the organic supermaket to buy Rye flour (Siegle) and Spelt flour (épeautre?)
If you know some recipes I would love to try them!
Back in a bit
Thanks
James
I'm trying this - when I get the time!
and this
I get all my bread flour from Lidl. The ciabatta mix makes a lovely light fluffy tin loaf. For trouble with the dough rising, check that your ingredients are not too hot or too cold. You can also try preheating the oven at 40 degrees then turning it off and leaving the bread dough to rise in the oven before cooking it.
I personally use my bread machine to make the dough and then shape it and leave it to rise before cooking it.
It’s also handy if I’m pushed for time as I can programme it to do the whole thing. Works well too
As I am retired, living alone and do not know how to bake a bread, I use a machine. Loaded in the evening and ready in the morning at the hour I like. Flour ? I am Flemish and we have to words : meel en bloem. Meel = the grain moulded and used us such (spelt will still be a bit grey), bloem (flour) is white.
300/400gr Spelt, 300/200gr Rye and seven grains, dépends on your taste and how Brown you want to be your bread. Always 600gr in total. Other ingrdients as mentioned in the instructions book from the machine. Use a slice machine and take eacdh time what I like to eat. Still fresh after 4/5 days.
And I buy it in Flanders bags of 25kgs when I visit my children. (1,10 euro/kgs).
Having been put on a diet by the quack and told to only eat wholemeal bread, I have taken to using packs of all in one mixes from a brand called Soesie that I get from local garden centre (Gamm Vert) in the bread machine. Never had a duff loaf yet.
Sounds excellent, I will give that a try!
Hi James, I make bread all the time and would suggest that you might like to try adding a crushed vitamin C tablet to the mix, especially if you are using brown or wholemeal flour, which is always likely to be more dense anyway. The vitamin C tablet helps it to rise as well as being a healthy additive. I usually make a wholemeal loaf using 2 parts strong wholemeal flour and 1 part strong white flour and add about 1 tablespoon each of linseeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. It gives the bread a lovely nutty flavour and is great with either savoury or sweet toppings. Regards
Janet Pfeiffer
Serious cooks know that often the best outcomes are pure serendipidy...when making bread you can follow the same recipe a hundred times and every time is different...you should have a go at repeating the recipe and see what happens! Happy cooking!
Better I would say, certainly more interesting. Just wish I could remember which was which!
So James, what is your overall opinion - success? Better/ worse than your previous attempts????
It's funny how the best loaves are always one offs!
I know I might be open to ridicule for this amongst all you 'boulangers' but I made a loaf last week which Karen claimed was the best bread she had tasted since she came to France. It was 500 gms of 'francine multi cereal flour" from Super Uand about 250 grms of left over Lidl Ciabatta bread mix, water and half a sachet of yeast bunged in the bread machine on dough setting, start to finish 2hrs, It was very good but I doubt I can ever be repeated.
Sounds tasty Heather, I'll try that.
All of the above but for us the best flour is Strong flour from UK - it uses American wheat. The latest recipe here is to add a good amount of chopped black olives - knead them well in - delicious.
These are the results of yesterdays baking. Even the hockey pucks are edible!
I have used a 55 not a lot of success with that though we have been told thats bread flour also used the dedicated packet bread mixes ok but still dense they all look as smell good but dense not using mechanical means all by hand also a wood fired the dough thrown onto the base of the oven its gentle heat judged as close as possible to about 210/20 the crust tends to go very crunchy, not a lot of variety here regards flour either the locals do little baking or we go to the wrong places
I think that top one is going to be a door stop.
Your yeast is fine then, what flour are you using?
Its doubling in size, i leave it for a couple of hours then deflate it, that should read 1 teaspoon of salt not yeast i have a dozen bread recipes all with just a few variations butter milk a mixture of flour some turn out ok and quiet palletable but still dense, even the crumpets are hit and miss yet even my wife says i make a better pastry than her even though we both follow the same procedure yet my wife is renown for her cakes
