How do I make fluffy bread?

[Herbsman.]

oh and heres a good source of flour http://www.shipton-mill.com/shop/

i almost bought a few 16kg and 25kg sacks of flour from them, including canadian, italian 00 and others, but cant afford it now because i bought a bike i could be making loads of bread but no, instead i have physically exhausted myself and hurt my knee doing rad awesome trick manouvres

 

[cesare]

Baking bread takes ages. It's a hobby

 

[Herbsman.]

be sure not to overprove your bread. or it may collapse.

slash it properly with a razor blade or sharp serrated blade - with the blade at 45 degrees from the vertical, and more lengthways than widthways. slash it just before putting it in the oven, no sooner. and make sure its not over-proved or it will collapse when you slash it.

make sure you have steam in your oven for the first ten minutes - put boiling water in a metal container in the oven a while before the loaf goes in. that allows the crust to expand more before setting, so your bread will rise a bit more.

get a sourdough starter on the go ffs! 50% water 50% flour (not yeast and water as someone incorrectly stated earlier), mix with a wooden spoon (apparently metal kills it but i have no idea whether this is true or not), add more flour & water @ 50:50 ratio every day until its vigorously bubbling.

oh and dont overprove.

 

[dilute micro]

Funny you say that herbsman. I made some today and overproofed it a little on accident.

 

[Herbsman.]

yeah? what happened?

sometimes it can work in your favour. IIRC it can rise more, give you bigger bubbles and nice crispy bubbly crust IF you handle it carefully so it doesnt collapse. But the dough is weaker as it's expanded too much (potentially leading to collapsement), and the crumb gets uneven bubbleation. IME of course.

 

[dilute micro]

I let it go for about an hour longer because I was messing with my sister's dog. It was fine but the crust cracked like crazy so it looks horrible. I'll put up a pic later.

 

[Herbsman.]

did you slash it?

 

[dilute micro]

did you slash it?

I don't slash sandwich bread partly because I adjusted my recipe so that it's as much dough as the pan can handle.

My overproofed one from yesterday. It's ugly but it tastes great and the inside is right. The crust is tough but i'm a weirdo and like it that way.

I've been using what in the US is called bread flour. I think it got called that for marketing reasons because it's not good for most types of bread. The only reason I'm using it is I got it from a mill that only does organic flours for other companies and they sell out the back door what they have left over and I get that for the same price as regular flour at Walmart. You have to buy what they got. Next time i'll get all-purpose flour.

 

[contadino]

The cake texture could be due to the yeast not being given enough time to work on the dough. That's what I see in reading your recipe. Your ingredients are fine. You just need to adjust the method part.

2 hours isn't enough time. And you shouldn't be kneading it a second time. Once you knead it the first time you should handle it as little as possible afterward. Punchdowns are fine but mess with it only enough to reform it. One trick bakers do to keep nice holes is on the last punchdown they don't really punch it all the way.

Don't go by the clock when your watching the dough rise. From now on only go by when it's doubled in size. If you have too much yeast and it's rising too fast either adjust the amount of yeast, the temp, or add a little more salt because salt is the brake that regulates yeast activity. You'll have to experiment if you find that to be a problem. The first doubling takes longer than the ones that follow so you gotta watch it.

If I were you I'd do 3 risings. This should take most of the day. If your dough is doubling real fast your bread will taste bland. So you do want it to take a long time. The yeast is doing more than putting air holes in the dough. It's doing a number on the proteins and making the bread elasticy. The color will look lighter too.

You can try adding a little butter and about 1 tablespoon powdered milk. That's headed towards my own recipe. I do 3 risings too.

Oh and get rid of the sugar. You don't need it. It'll help slow things down once you do.

Honey is worth using imo if you want. It'll help keep it fresh longer.

This is pretty much spot on advice. You'll get nowhere with 2 hours rise.

Also, the wife's bread used to have that cake-like texture until she started holding back a bit of dough each time and including it with the next batch. I think it's called beega, but that may be a local name. The bit you hold back can be frozen between batches. The bread became incrementally better.

 

[Herbsman.]

ah, the biga. similar to what is known as a preferment, or a poolish (ive only just learnt that biga's are drier than poolish's).

you can use it in place of a sourdough starter & you can make it fromc scratch instead of keeping old dough if needs be.

for a poolish just mix 50:50 flour & water & 1/4 tsp yeast. i normally use a sourdough starter/poolish that makes up about 35% of the main flour weight, so if i'm using 1kg of flour i use 350g of starter/poolish. then leave it til it's actively bubbling away. for the drier biga you want about 60:40 or even 70:30 flour:water.

oops i forgot to add, if i use 1/4tsp yeast for your poolish/biga, then i add another 1/4tsp to the main dough afterwards, where i would have normally used a whole tsp if i hadn't used a poolish. so basically using a poolish i reduce the amount of yeast by half because of the extra fermentation time.