The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Hello from London

Littlebrooklyn's picture
Littlebrooklyn

Hello from London

I'm new to the forum although I have been reading the posts on it for a little while.  

I am really enjoying baking cakes, bread and also making soup, but I find bread the most satisfying and sometimes the most confusing too.

I am not a very experienced bread maker and only started a few months ago with one of those bread mixes you buy in the supermarket.  As that turned out so well I decided to make my own bread from scratch and haven't bought any bread from the shops since October.

Mainly I bake plain white bread but I have also tried wholemeal, granary, spelt and rye.  In fact I made my first sodabread with rye flour yesterday and it was my first real disaster as I followed the recipe on the packet which was just for rye flour, milk, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar and oil.  There were no instructions to knead the bread, just to mix it, shape it, leave it for 45 mins, then bake it.  My other half said it looked more like a small bread roll than a loaf of bread and I think he was right!

Hoping I will get some ideas and inspiration on this forum and look forward to trying out some new recipes too.

Lyn

Lazybakery's picture
Lazybakery

Nice to have you on board, and you've brought us sunshine in London today as well!

I think I tried the same Rye sodabread recipe and and had exactly the same result, decided to stick to regular bread after that and am now trying to perfect my sourdoughs. There's a wealth of knowledge here and an awful lot of useful information

Littlebrooklyn's picture
Littlebrooklyn

Thanks for the welcome.  I am just proving a batch of white dough as I type this, at least I can be confident it will be edible!  Have to say I can't keep up with family asking me for my bread as they love it so much, but there is a limit to how many loaves I can make at once!  Today I am just using 1kg of flour, 14grams of instant yeast, 4tsp salt, 6tbsp olive oil and 600ml lukewarm water which seems to give me 2 nice loaves, although they never seem to rise as much as bread that is baked in a breadmachine!

Lyn

ananda's picture
ananda

Hi Lyn,

I'm up in Northumberland, and it's raining here!   Welcome to TFL.

Regarding the rye soda bread, you don't work the dough; shaping it straightaway is correct.   However, leaving it to rest for 45 minutes is plain wrong.   Soda bread is baked either immediately, or after a brief rest period, depending on the type of acid combination in your particular choice of baking powder.   Gluten development is not part of baking with chemical aeration

Best wishes

Andy

Littlebrooklyn's picture
Littlebrooklyn

Thanks for that Andy, I've never tried soda bread before and probably won't again after that!  I did think it all sounded very wrong but when it's printed on the packet you tend to think they know what they are talking about.  I wouldn't mind trying some sourdough bread though, although I guess I need to work out how to make the starter for that first!

Sorry it's raining up there, we did have lovely sunshine earlier but it's clouding over now.

Lyn

nannycool's picture
nannycool

Hi Lyn, I am an ex Londoner and although long in the tooth am still trying to make a decent loaf of bread every time. I am in fact also trying to introduce myself but can't find where to do it.

Littlebrooklyn's picture
Littlebrooklyn

I think you just start a new thread in this section nannycool.  I need to work out how to add some pics so that I can see what, if anything, is wrong with my bread!

Lyn

ananda's picture
ananda

Hi Lyn,

Floyd has posted some guidelines in the FAQs section [tabs at top of the page] here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/2960/posting-photos-faq 

If it's any help, I host my photos on flickr and paste the url for any photo into the html text of the post I want to put up.

Best wishes

Andy

ElPanadero's picture
ElPanadero

Hi Lyn

Andy imo is quite correct about not working the dough and getting the thing in the oven as soon as possible once you've combined the ingredients. The baking soda starts acting as soon as it is mixed in with the other ingredients.

Here is a very tasty recipe from River Cottage for an Apple, Guinness and Cheese Soda Bread. Very easy and very yummy.

http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/apple-guinness-cheese-soda-bread/

You will see in the instructions what Andy was talking about e.g. : "Combine the oil, buttermilk and Guinness and pour into the dry ingredients. The next stage is the most important part of making good soda bread: the less you handle the mixture, the lighter and tastier the loaf will be. ‘Feather’ your hand out like a giant fork and gently combine the ingredients. This should take no more than a minute and the mixture should only just be combined."

GL and happy baking.

EP

Littlebrooklyn's picture
Littlebrooklyn

I keep trying to post some pics of my bread but when I copy and paste my flickr link I get this message

EntityMalformedException: Missing bundle property on entity of type taxonomy_term. in entity_extract_ids() (line 7721 of /var/www/html/thefreshloaf.com/includes/common.inc).

I just ordered a jar of sourdough starter, I don't really have much idea of what to do with it other than I know you have to feed it and look after it properly and it should last a long time, so here goes!

Lyn

ananda's picture
ananda

Floyd advised me to paste in using html Lyn,

Don't know if that is any help?

Andy

Littlebrooklyn's picture
Littlebrooklyn

Thanks Andy, not sure I remember enough about html to be able to do that!

Lyn

adri's picture
adri

To post an image:
"[img]" http://linkToYourPicture/asdf.jpg "[/img]"

Just without the quotation marks. I had to put them or it would be interpreted as posting an image by the web server logic.

Littlebrooklyn's picture
Littlebrooklyn

Thanks for that, now I remember, must be having a blonde moment, let me go and try again 

Lyn