Bread baking.

[Buchan]

Elizabeth David's Bread and Yeast Cookery is excellent, as is Andrew Whitely Bread Matters (if techy) Paul Hollywoods Bread is OK. You can't go wrong with Delia

Simple Foccacia - 500g strong white, 1/2 pint hand-hot water (yes you read that right) sachet dried yeast, half teaspoon salt. Mix all dry together, add water mix and knead. It should be a slightly wet mix - don't be tempted to add more flour as a wet dough rises better. Knead until it feels elastic. Into bowl cover with damp towel, et rise - about 40min. Knead again then spread into a flat oblong, push your finger tips in to make slight indentations, cover with olive oil and large flakes of salt and big ground pepper. Prove 40min Bake at 200C 20 mins

 

[Yorkie]

Hi Lads.
Thank you all very much for helping me out, i appreciate it. Some great photos too.

I adore bread and eat far too much of it. My Mrs has banned a bread machine for my own good and is not keen on the idea of making some. She knows i will keep slicing pieces off and putting 1/8" of Lurpak on it .

I double checked the book i got the recipe from and it does indeed say to use 1oz of lard or marg'. It is a book from the 70s called 'Good Housekeeping'. I will not be adding any fat.

I will be getting my ingredients from Morrisons on Monday. Will keep you posted.

 

[Sharpie]

The only fat I add is olive oil, in moderation. I use a bread maker, excellent device. Available at a charity shop near you, mostly almost unused. If you don't get on with it, donate it back again and feel doubly worthy.

Many also have a jam making setting, which can work very well with small quantities of fruit, home grown, foraged, or going out of date at the supermarket. Just buy some bags of jam making sugar (contains pectin) and try it.

If you can't find the bread maker specific yeast use the ordinary stuff but add a crushed small vitamin C tablet as a yeast nutrient. A regular multivitamin tablet works the same but probably fortifies the stuff with other vits, though there won't be much in a single slice.

Nuts, seeds, chopped dried fruit, fungi, tiny lardons of fried bacon, whatever all add interest.

Key point, as soon as the cycle has finished, get the loaf out and put it on a rack to cool. Leave it in the bread maker for a while and the crust will go soggy and generally be a disappointment.

Experiment, but good flour is key. Not the cheapest stuff that you can find, though you can bulk out really good artisanal stuff with a proportion of Lidl or Aldi And barely notice the difference.

 

[Yorkie]

The only fat I add is olive oil, in moderation. I use a bread maker, excellent device. Available at a charity shop near you, mostly almost unused. If you don't get on with it, donate it back again and feel doubly worthy.

Many also have a jam making setting, which can work very well with small quantities of fruit, home grown, foraged, or going out of date at the supermarket. Just buy some bags of jam making sugar (contains pectin) and try it.

If you can't find the bread maker specific yeast use the ordinary stuff but add a crushed small vitamin C tablet as a yeast nutrient. A regular multivitamin tablet works the same but probably fortifies the stuff with other vits, though there won't be much in a single slice.

Nuts, seeds, chopped dried fruit, fungi, tiny lardons of fried bacon, whatever all add interest.

Key point, as soon as the cycle has finished, get the loaf out and put it on a rack to cool. Leave it in the bread maker for a while and the crust will go soggy and generally be a disappointment.

Experiment, but good flour is key. Not the cheapest stuff that you can find, though you can bulk out really good artisanal stuff with a proportion of Lidl or Aldi And barely notice the difference.

Excellent advice, thank you. Never occured to me to try a charity shop for a Bread machine. I may have to go unilateral on that decision.

 

[macfarlane]

If you have a home bakers near you try and get some bread improver from them,it reacts with the salt and the yeast and your bread will be ready for the oven in a quarter of the normal time,if any one Edinburgh area needs /wants some improver just message me ,don’t think you can just buy it in Tesco /Morrison’s etc.

 

[Basc2225]

Olive oil has always worked well for me, never tried margarine or lard

 

[Limpet]

Excellent advice, thank you. Never occured to me to try a charity shop for a Bread machine. I may have to go unilateral on that decision.

I've used a bread machine from the local freecycle for the past 2 years, it's a Panasonic which is better than the Aldi/lidl options. I use a bit of plain rape oil to preserve the bread a little. A little salt for flavour and a little sugar to feed the yeast. I do mix wholemeal and white 50:50 .

Tips to avoid scoffing - we are all guilty of it !!

Wait until it's cold so you can cut slices thinner
Cut the whole thing in half and freeze half of it.

 

[Olaf]

If you have a home bakers near you try and get some bread improver from them,it reacts with the salt and the yeast and your bread will be ready for the oven in a quarter of the normal time,if any one Edinburgh area needs /wants some improver just message me ,don’t think you can just buy it in Tesco /Morrison’s etc.

Alternatively you could go the other way and make some properly leavened bread using only natural yeast and some organic flour some salt and water.
The tin loaf below is a German Rye sourdough bread I make using whole rye grain that I mill myself. You get a much more biodynamic bread using freshly milled flour.
buy the best and freshest flour you can get as flour oxidises and Loses quality very quickly once the grains are milled.

Another option is just to make some light fluffy white bread for some Hamburgers, I use organic yeast for these and fallow deer for the meat patty


A thing I do is to always have a tupaware container of fresh dough balls in the fridge , they keep well for several days like this. You can then just whip one or more out and make pizzas or Nan bread etc at the drop of a hat
The secret to good bread is having a very well hydrated dough that is folded and shaped in a particular way and then allowed to ferment at the correct temperature for the correct amount of time .
i bake bread every day, I usually prepare my dough in the evening after work whilst I’m cooking my evening meal, I then leave it to prove over night and shape it in the morning and pop it into a basket ready to bake in the evening if I’m doing a sourdough loaf like this
If you just want some nice soft white baps for some hamburgers then you can prepare the dough let it prove and then knock it back and shape the baps and bake them within a couple of hours. If you use a stand mixer with a dough hook in it ( as I mostly do owing to nearly always having dried glue on my hands or machine grease under my fingernails from work) the amount of time that you actually spend making some bread is not much more than the time it takes to make a cup of tea. It’s all just about making bread as part of your normal day and thinking ahead a little as opposed to stopping everything that your doing just to make some bread.
whilst making good bread requires time your actual involvement in it is only a matter of a few minutes.
i can recommend a book called bread matters by Andrew Whitley. If you read that you will not want to eat any industrially made bread ever again. It’s absolutely disgusting.
kindest regards, Olaf

 

[macfarlane]

Alternatively you could go the other way and make some properly leavened bread using only natural yeast and some organic flour some salt and water.
The tin loaf below is a German Rye sourdough bread I make using whole rye grain that I mill myself. You get a much more biodynamic bread using freshly milled flour.
buy the best and freshest flour you can get as flour oxidises and Loses quality very quickly once the grains are milled.
View attachment 189925
Another option is just to make some light fluffy white bread for some Hamburgers, I use organic yeast for these and fallow deer for the meat patty
View attachment 189926
View attachment 189927
A thing I do is to always have a tupaware container of fresh dough balls in the fridge , they keep well for several days like this. You can then just whip one or more out and make pizzas or Nan bread etc at the drop of a hatView attachment 189932
The secret to good bread is having a very well hydrated dough that is folded and shaped in a particular way and then allowed to ferment at the correct temperature for the correct amount of time .
i bake bread every day, I usually prepare my dough in the evening after work whilst I’m cooking my evening meal, I then leave it to prove over night and shape it in the morning and pop it into a basket ready to bake in the evening if I’m doing a sourdough loaf like this
View attachment 189933If you just want some nice soft white baps for some hamburgers then you can prepare the dough let it prove and then knock it back and shape the baps and bake them within a couple of hours. If you use a stand mixer with a dough hook in it ( as I mostly do owing to nearly always having dried glue on my hands or machine grease under my fingernails from work) the amount of time that you actually spend making some bread is not much more than the time it takes to make a cup of tea. It’s all just about making bread as part of your normal day and thinking ahead a little as opposed to stopping everything that your doing just to make some bread.
whilst making good bread requires time your actual involvement in it is only a matter of a few minutes.
i can recommend a book called bread matters by Andrew Whitley. If you read that you will not want to eat any industrially made bread ever again. It’s absolutely disgusting.
kindest regards, Olaf

Hi mate I think it’s the waiting on the bread to prove (rise) that puts lots of people off actually making some I’m a baker by trade been making bread,rolls for 30 odd years ,and I still go home and bake bread in the house with my two girls.Easy to do flour,salt,yeast that’s it doesn’t need anything else except time.

 

[Olaf]

Hi mate I think it’s the waiting on the bread to prove (rise) that puts lots of people off actually making some I’m a baker by trade been making bread,rolls for 30 odd years ,and I still go home and bake bread in the house with my two girls.Easy to do flour,salt,yeast that’s it doesn’t need anything else except time.

Nice post, and congratulations on being a skilled hand worker. I bet your bread rolls are predictably excellent , what with 30 years experience.
i agree on what you said about people not wanting to wait.
what changed it for me was that I used to bake bread maybe once a month on a Saturday , if I was knocking about the house .slowly but surely I started to really resent having to pay for crap bread, as the only half decent baker close to me was on the market on a Saturday and a loaf of his rye bread was close to £5, and that was 10 years ago.
So I started to bake all my own bread , making up the dough in a big old 20l stainless steel bowl that a mate gave me that was being slung out from one of the restaurants he manages. After a few months of doing that I started to get fed up with always having to scrub and scrape my hands spotlessly clean before I could get the dough made up so I bought myself a little second hand 6l stand mixer and have never looked back.
ive become a bit involved with my baking now and buy all my flour and grains directly from Shipton mill. They mill all their grain to order and have predominantly only organic products, which I like. I figured that if I’m going to have the autonomy of baking all our bread then I might as well buy the best ingredients and not have to rely on treated flour from the supermarket.
a couple of years ago I bought myself a secondhand hawos grain mill from an old lady in Germany . It cost me about £150 and my girlfriend and several other people thought it was pretty funny how involved I was getting. After the stand mixer, I’d say that grain mill was one of the best things I’ve done for the bread baking department in our kitchen. Every couple of months I order a couple of 15kg sacks of untreated stone ground organic white flour. I now also always have a 25kg sack of organic rye grain and another of organic wheat grain on the go and I mill them to whatever consistency I need for various types of bread on my grain mill.
I agree with you and think that a lot of people just don’t want to have to wait for some bacteria to help make their bread for them. The thing is making good bread is really satisfying and rewarding,I’ve found it’s also very cheap if i buy ingredients in larger quantities. whilst it does sometimes take a relatively long time to make certain bread ( the German rye bread takes 24 hrs from start to finish) the amount of actual personal time I input is is only about 5 minutes , the rest of the time the mixer or yeast or oven are doing the work for me. It’s actually really quite lifeless, but I get excited when I remember that I’ve got a sourdough loaf waiting for me to put it in the oven when I get home from the workshop or deer stalking.
what is your favourite bread recipe? Or is that highly secret!
kindest regards, Olaf

 

[willie_gunn]

i can recommend a book called bread matters by Andrew Whitley. If you read that you will not want to eat any industrially made bread ever again. It’s absolutely disgusting.
kindest regards, Olaf

Thank you for that - a really informative post.

I will look out a copy of that book as well

 

[Olaf]

Thank you for that - a really informative post.

I will look out a copy of that book as well

A pleasure, I noticed a couple of other people have recommended that book on this thread too. It’s really good and dispelled many myths on the subject that I had been told. After I bought my copy of that book ( secondhand off Amazon for about £10) I bought another two copies, one for my folks and another for my brother. It’s a brilliant book and one that I’d recommend reading from cover to cover rather than just dipping into it. It’s way more than a recipe book, the author is on a bit of a mission to promote high quality healthy and delicious bread being made at home.
when I shoot fallow deer over a field of wheat now, it’s taken on even more meaningfulness to me now as they are eating our bread
Not even a vegan has an option to complain about that, well not unless they also have issues with eating bread that is
I saw a very interesting speech that a German bread enthusiast gave at a university in the US A few years ago. I will try to find the film and will post it on this thread.
Ive actually got some rolls in the oven now so must go !
cheers, Olaf

 

[Olaf]

Here, I just pulled the breakfast rolls out of the oven, they only take about 10 minutes to bake.

really simple,
500g strong white organic untreated wheat flour (Shipton mill)
300 ml water
Half a teaspoon of bio real organic dried yeast (Shipton mil)
8g sea salt ( about Half a tablespoon )

i just put the water in the mixer bowl, add the yeast and swirl it about to dissolve it then add the flour and switch on the mixer on slow with a dough hook, once the flour is mixed( after about a minute) in I Chuck in the salt and let it mix for 10 minutes.
after that I just take out the dough hook and pop a plate on the bowl. Leave it for about 30 to 4o mins until it’s doubled in size and then I take it out, make it into a ball and then cut it into 4 bits. Then form the four bits of dough into balls by folding the edges in to the centre in a round the clock motion. I then just put the four dough balls into a sealed container in the fridge with a bit of olive oil smeared on it so they don’t stick.
tyr next day or whenever I need them I just take them out and make something with them.
Pizza
Rolls
Pitta breads for venison Döner
Flat breads etc etc.
really easy.
The rolls in the picture, I just took the dough balls and put them on a oiled pice of steel plate that I use for baking on ( it is an off cut I had from a bespoke kitchen I made) and cut the dough balls in half ( (8 rolls) and don’t Form them at all so as not to knock the bacterial gas farts out of them.
I heat the oven, glaze the rolls with milk and sprinkle some seeds on them and into a very hot oven ( (250 ish deg c) for about 10 mins.
The key is letting the dough fermentation happen slowly over several Hours in the fridge. The dough keeps in the fridge for several days so you always have instant fresh bread at hand .
tasty
Kindest regards, Olaf

 

[willie_gunn]

What time do you open for sales?

 

[Olaf]

What time do you open for sales?

 

[dodgyrog]

Worth a look

https://www.youtube.com/user/jonboy2478

 

[Klenchblaize]

Your phone was listening:

Klexa

 

[Yorkie]

Hi lads.
This has turned into an excellent thread. Thank you.

I have noticed two types of bread flour. Strong and very strong. Which is best to start with?

 

[dodgyrog]

I use strong 50/50 with wholemeal
I also use unsalted butter not marge nor lard

 

[macfarlane]

Nice post, and congratulations on being a skilled hand worker. I bet your bread rolls are predictably excellent , what with 30 years experience.
i agree on what you said about people not wanting to wait.
what changed it for me was that I used to bake bread maybe once a month on a Saturday , if I was knocking about the house .slowly but surely I started to really resent having to pay for crap bread, as the only half decent baker close to me was on the market on a Saturday and a loaf of his rye bread was close to £5, and that was 10 years ago.
So I started to bake all my own bread , making up the dough in a big old 20l stainless steel bowl that a mate gave me that was being slung out from one of the restaurants he manages. After a few months of doing that I started to get fed up with always having to scrub and scrape my hands spotlessly clean before I could get the dough made up so I bought myself a little second hand 6l stand mixer and have never looked back.
ive become a bit involved with my baking now and buy all my flour and grains directly from Shipton mill. They mill all their grain to order and have predominantly only organic products, which I like. I figured that if I’m going to have the autonomy of baking all our bread then I might as well buy the best ingredients and not have to rely on treated flour from the supermarket.
a couple of years ago I bought myself a secondhand hawos grain mill from an old lady in Germany . It cost me about £150 and my girlfriend and several other people thought it was pretty funny how involved I was getting. After the stand mixer, I’d say that grain mill was one of the best things I’ve done for the bread baking department in our kitchen. Every couple of months I order a couple of 15kg sacks of untreated stone ground organic white flour. I now also always have a 25kg sack of organic rye grain and another of organic wheat grain on the go and I mill them to whatever consistency I need for various types of bread on my grain mill.
I agree with you and think that a lot of people just don’t want to have to wait for some bacteria to help make their bread for them. The thing is making good bread is really satisfying and rewarding,I’ve found it’s also very cheap if i buy ingredients in larger quantities. whilst it does sometimes take a relatively long time to make certain bread ( the German rye bread takes 24 hrs from start to finish) the amount of actual personal time I input is is only about 5 minutes , the rest of the time the mixer or yeast or oven are doing the work for me. It’s actually really quite lifeless, but I get excited when I remember that I’ve got a sourdough loaf waiting for me to put it in the oven when I get home from the workshop or deer stalking.
what is your favourite bread recipe? Or is that highly secret!
kindest regards, Olaf

Hi Olaf I’ve been making rolls the same way for 30 odd years ,my dad for closer to 60 years ,we don’t have any fancy machines just a big Hobart mixer ,a divider for cutting the rolls out by hand and an oven,The divider ,mixer and oven are older than me (54) I remember making our rolling pins out of old brush handles at school ,still in use daily .biggest problem we have nowadays is getting a good quality strong flour ,two many chemicals bleaching agents in it ,stuff we use comes from Canada ,my dad thinks it has more gluten from getting more sunlight when growing so it keeps its body doesn’t collapse or go soggy.I’m not so sure but sometimes it’s best to agree with him.