Long Time Lurker Gets Account

Hello all!

I've loved this site for a long time, I've read many of the articles and forum threads, and finally decided that if I like it that much, I should get an account of my own. I habitually take pictures of my bread anyway, if I post them on here it will mean I am an Enthusiast, rather than just being... well... slightly strange.

I've been baking bread for quite a few years now, and I've been baking most of our bread at home for at least three years. I was inspired by my Mum, who despite not being a confident cook in many ways has always been an enthusiastic maker of soup, bread and jam, and if you have those, what more do you need in life?

My workaday bread is half-wholemeal made with plain (AP) flour and wholemeal chapatti flour, easy-bake yeast, salt and usually milk rather than water. I swing to either end of the wholegrain scale, from white through to 100% wholemeal as the mood takes me. I love to add porridge oats although recently I have been having problems with them making the bread gummy. I used to have no problems. Not sure what is going wrong there.

I used to knead only by hand but have had a stand mixer renaissance recently, brought on by Hokkaido Milk Bread, variations of which completely overtook the daily bread role for some time there, and re-established my relationship with my Kenwood mixer, which had been sadly neglected up to that point. Boy, can that thing knead. And isn't Hokkaido Milk Bread a miracle? My favourite variation is a half-wholemeal version, especially if you use rolled oats in place of flour for the tang zhong, and a dash of honey instead of sugar. Still fluffy and completely overcomes the blandness, which can be an issue otherwise. The wholemeal flavour goes beautifully with the richness of the dry milk.

I've also had lots of fun with Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which I find pretty tasty and a great string to your bow in terms of fitting bread round varying schedules. It completely opened my mind in terms of kneading, the negotiability of it, and started me off on understanding what kneading actually does and the effect of kneading versus a long rise without kneading. Different textures, different flavours.

My most recent 'wow' moment was when I read about Dave Miller and the possible benefits of mega high hydration for wholegrain flour. Being in a slightly devil-may-care mood that morning, I threw in a litre of milk to my kilogram of wholemeal flour, mixed the resulting soup for a few minutes in the mixer and dumped it in the fridge for a few hours, assuming it was going to be a big bowl of failure. It was not. Oh My Goodness. I've never handled dough like it, it was like a big water bed, but it came together, and it baked beautifully to a soft and flexible crumb. And that wasn't fresh flour - it was 100% shop-bought wholemeal chapatti flour. Mega high hydration, folks - not just for fresh-ground flour. I'll be trying that again.

However for now I'm back to the good old half-wholemeal everyday bread, getting my hand back in after my long wanderings in the land of Tang Zhong, and considering my next experiment.

Sorry for the novel! I'm glad to be here at last.

Hippytea