The Home Made Bread Thread

That looks mighty tasty!.. what was your oven temp? steam/no steam? kind of flour? sorry for so many ?'s, but i'm always jealous of bread that looks better than mine.

that said- went to work today (did i mention i quit my job?)- and saw i still had flour on my shoes from baking bread last night...and realized I was happier baking bread than doing what i've done for the past 25 years!....looks like a lot of baking in my future

I was contacted last week by a chef that has been doing the kitchen grind for 15 years. He has grown to love the simple challenge of making a perfect loaf of bread. Looks like I may have a consulting gig in the new year helping him open a bakery.
There's something very soulful about making bread. We're in the middle of a 4500loaf, 8000pastry Thanksgiving right now. Nothing is better for us than a well planned holiday with beautiful bread stacked everywhere.

Good times

I envy you.
Happy Thanksgiving

Im gonna go make bread!

That's regular flour, 500* oven, in a cast iron pot (with lid for 30 mins, lid off for about 10). It's the first time I've added a couple fold/kneads to it, (on advice from this thread), and I got a much finer crumb than I expected. Good flavor, I like the really dark finished loaf.

`Not much to look at since it's out of a machine, but tasty.

Thanks- i suspect my oven (brand new gas) is a bit hot. I'll give it a go with a lower temp tonight. Love that dark- almost toast, crust...

thx!

Haven't made these in a while so since there's so many (23) coming to Mom's tomorrow thought I'd make a test batch plus use these for 2nd helpings. Need to improve on the look since it is after all, Thanksgiving. My kitchen smells like an elementary school cafeteria right now with the fresh rolls for those of you old enough here to remember that smell, along with a couple pats of butter on the little square paper servings. Mmmmmmmmm..... good.

All this talk of rolls made me want to try the noknead dough for rolls. It was obvious that I couldn't do them in the dutch oven, so needed to figure something out instead. I don't have a pizza stone so decided to fake it.


So I went and dug some gravel out of the backyard, washed it with the hose, and put it on a cookie sheet. Stuck it in the oven to dry and preheat. Took the noknead dough, and cut it into pieces, and baked them on a smaller cookie sheet that fit right on top of the gravel . It took two batches to do all the dough. During the first batch, I'd put a cake pan on the bottom rack of the oven, and threw ice cubes into it to make steam.



The second batch, I skipped the steam. They came out with a lighter crust. Still tasty tho. Also cut cooking time down to 25 minutes per batch.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread already or not, but a good (and cheap) substitute for thermal mass in the oven is unglazed terra cotta or quarry tiles. You can get them pretty big (18" square or so) for about $1 at Home Depot or the like. Often there are broken box specials where you can buy just one or two.
I used about a dozen 8" tiles in a "box" around the middle of my oven when I used to have a kinda crappy electric oven that didn't keep the heat very well. They take a while to heat all the way up, but keep the oven very stable once hot.
For a couple bucks you can make a pretty good proxy for a bread oven, and it all just packs away in a box when you aren't using it.
I baked a few times right on one of the big tiles like a pizza stone, worked great.

Or, head down to your local countertop maker and have them cut you a random piece of granite slab to fit in you oven and use that. A bit more money, but a ton of thermal mass.

Sounds better than a pan of gravel...

I posted two of these in the cast iron thread, but in case some aren't reading that, here is the poor-man's dutch oven I use, then with the top off at 15 minutes, and then again 20 minutes later.

The bread seems good in every way, but I'm thinking that the 3 cups of flour no-knead recipe I'm using may be too little now... perhaps I need to go to 4 cups to get the rise I'm looking for to make it proportional?

My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner.

Finally baked some bread in my new oven today. Click picture for a video!



First time with the new oven. The bread was a little underproofed, and I need to figure out a good way to get steam in the oven. The bread split funny as a result. I'm thinking I could probably get 5 or 6 of these 2kilo loaves in an oven load.




Crumb looks great, and it tastes awesome! We're playing with a new stone ground flour at the bakery from New York State wheat. In France, the flour would be called Type 80. It's stone ground, has all the bran removed, but retained germ. The flour is kind of a cross between a refined white flour and whole wheat. Not quite either. Very interesting. The bread almost tastes earthy, with an aroma that fills the room. Slight tang from the levain. My kids are asking "can I have another piece?" This baker is so proud that they have never had fluffy white bread in their lives



It was screaming for some Beef Carbonade, so I ran to the store, and got it simmering!

What's going on when your bread tastes too "flour-y"?

A pinch more salt? Less flour?

I'm just making a simple white sandwich loaf and it rose to what I expected, the crust was nice, the hole structure looked okay and was about what you'd expect for a sandwich loaf, but it's got a little bit of a "flour-y" taste.

Any idea what I did?

Edit: I think I "scooped" the flour and used too much (but I thought I got the dough the right consistency), also, I may have underbaked it a little.

Plus one on this recommendation. I picked up four tiles for a dollar apiece at the local habitat for humanity surplus store. My first try with the tiles in the oven gave me my best loaf yet.

Jim's suggestions/coaching got me to the point where my bread has been consistently good.

Thank you!

I want to cook the insides of my no-knead bread a little more. It turns out close to fine, but I have a feeling that it could be even better inside.

Currently I cook with the pre-heated cast iron 'lid' on at 500 degrees for 15 or 18 minutes (depending on loaf size), then with the lid off for 20 minutes.

Would lowering the temperature and upping either the covered, or uncovered, cooking stage be the thing to do here?

Just found this thread and could do with some advise.
I make the dutch oven bread cause it's easy.
Got a cow a few months ago and have been making cheese butter etc.
I could do with an easy sour dough recipe for my butter milk as I presently just give it to the dogs.
cheers
ATK_nut wife

Hmm. Taste can be subjective-do you think it might be yeasty? Open a pack of yeast and give it a good smell. Does your bread taste like that smells?

Most recipes call for way too much yeast. Just to give an idea, we are going to make 835 loaves of bread that contain yeast tonight-about 1/2 our production is yeasted. The rest is sourdough. We're going to use 858grams/1.9# of yeast! Roughly 1gram of yeast per loaf! Now, look at your recipe and compare our yeast usage to yours. Guaranteed, it's quite a bit more! Post your recipe and I'll take a look, but I'm not much help with cups/tablespoons so hopefully it is in weight?

Most quoted bread recipes, esp. for "white sandwich bread" are not fermenting wheat. They're rising bread. BIG difference! It's hard to say exactly what to do next with your recipe, but you can always cut the yeast way back in a recipe with little change if there is a ton to start with. If you're using that "quick rise" yeast, it would be best to throw it away and get real yeast.

Just a quick word on yeast-we use 2# blocks of fresh yeast. It almost looks like a brick and it crumbles. For years, that was the only thing bakers used because dry yeast just wasn't consistent or reliable. That has changed though. You can now find great Instant yeast in most grocery stores that have a 2 year shelf life! Saf Instant is one. Lallemand makes another, but I don't know if its available to the consumer. Lots of bakeries are switching to instant yeast since it is so shelf stable. Compared to Active Dry yeast, it does not need to be activated in warm water before use. Simply mix it into the flour thoroughly, as cold water can shock it.

As for underbaking, I would say if the crumb was thoroughly set, it probably was not underbaked. Keep in mind, color is flavor! Esp. in the no knead breads lots of inmates are making, don't be afraid to bake it on the darker side. It'll help with a sturdier crust and give tons of flavor. Color on a bread crust is largely from caramelization of sugars.

I'd keep the oven hot, but keep the lid on a little longer.

I've never used Buttermilk in a bread, so can't help on that. Sorry!