Tips and advice

Ingredients and Equipment- Tips and Advice.

Ingredients:

          Flour and Dough:

• No need for expensive flours, as basic strong white or wholemeal flour will make good bread, although as you build confidence you can try malted, rye and spelt flours and experiment with flavours, techniques, shapes and different types of flour.

• Hydration is the ratio percentage of water to flour, White dough should be 70% hydration while wholemeal is 75%, so 500g of white would need 350ml which is 70% of the flour while wholemeal would need 5% more which would make the water amount 375ml to 500g of flour

• To get a good sized loaf from your tin, you want dough that is 60% volume of the tin for white flour or 70% for wholemeal. This is because wholemeal doesn’t rise as much as white, so if you wanted a wholemeal loaf to be the same size then you increase the dough size by 10-12%

• However you can stick to 60% and keep it simple and make your life easier!  So simply using 500g of white and 500g of wholemeal when making a white or wholemeal loaf instead of having to scale ingredients up, the wholemeal loaf will be smaller but still a good size.

• To find out just how much dough your tin would need to fill it at 60% you need to is to put it empty on weighing scales, fill it with water to the top and work out how many ml there are for example 1300ml is 1300g.

• Based on the 1300g/ml example we would need a white dough that is 780g (to work this out I divided 1300 by 100 then multiplied it by 60 to work out 60 percent which gave me 780, this is weight of the dough before baking and includes all of the ingredients). To adjust recipes to suit tin volumes, here is a website with a dough converter:http://bakerybits.co.uk/dough-calculator-bakerybits.

• It is important to get dough weight right as a lot of tins say they are for a certain weight but actually aren't and this can lead to the dough collapsing because it isn't properly supported and doesn't have enough room to expand or the dough spills over the sides because the tin is too low. Adjust a recipe to suit your tin needs by up scaling or downscaling

• Normal table salt and tap water are perfectly fine to use, the FSA (Food Standards Agency recommend that 1g of yeast per 100g of flour, my recipes say 10g, but please feel free to use 5-10g depending on preference.  

           Yeast:

• Once you have weighed your flour and put it into a bowl, place the salt and yeast on separate sides, this is because salt can retard and even kill the yeast.

• For fresh baker's yeast use double to amount in the recipe and mix in water before adding to the flour

There are 2 main types of dry yeast:

• Instant yeast contains ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), this yeast can be put in with the flour dry and used with cold water.

• The other is Dried Active Yeast, which is used for bread makers or if it is by hand it has to be has to be dissolved in warm water before being mixed with flour, it also cannot have a bulk fermentation so the dough has to be proved until doubled in size and then baked, unlike Instant yeast which can be used with cold water, but mixed with the flour dry and allows for the bulk fermentation/first rise.

• On both tins or packages of yeast of it will suggest putting the yeast into water  (but with instant yeast you don't have to and the water can be cold) that is 1 part boiling, 2 parts cold (so for 300ml you would think it would be 100ml of boiling and 200ml of cold, but at this temperature which is about 35-37 degrees this is too hot and would kill the yeast, the ratio of boiling water to cold is actually 50ml of boiling water and 100ml of cold water and the remaining 150ml is cold water.

Equipment

• Use digital scales to accurately measure ingredients, you can also use measuring spoons to measure and add small amounts of liquid.

• Wire cooling rack to let the bread cool down, this is important otherwise you will have a damp base if the bread isn’t cooled down

• Dough lame or grignette need to be sharp, normal knives will pull and tear the surface of the loaf and make a mess instead of creating a clean cut

• Large mixing bowls big enough to allow dough to double in size.

• Put an empty jug onto scales to weight the water, as 1g equals 1ml of water, this means you will be able to get exact amounts easier than using a jug with measurements

• A plastic or metal dough scraper is an invaluable tool, it can be used to deal with wet and sticky dough's, scrape dough off fingers and work surfaces and help remove dough from bowls.

Other pieces of equipment:

• Cling film
• Plastic or glass jugs
• Food Mixer for very wet dough like ciabatta
• Large glass bowls big enough to allow dough to double
• Measuring jugs
• Dough scraper
• Spatula or spoon 
• Rolling pin
• Dry clean tea towels
• Timer
• Serrated knife, dame lame or grignettes
• Digital weighing scales
• Large flat baking trays
• Measuring Spoons
• 3L square plastic container for ciabatta
• Baking paper/parchment
• Pastry brush
• Proving basket with lining (for rye bread and other very wet doughs)
• Lot of different loaf tins in different sizes (write in permanent marker underneath the 60% dough weight in grams so you can easily decide what one to use)
• Clean dry tea towels
• Lot of bags of strong flour
• Sunflower oil (vegetable oil taints the taste of the bread)
• Olive oil for pizza, ciabatta or other Italian breads

Mixing and Kneading

• Make a well in the centre of the flour, add your water using a spatula or spoon combining all the ingredients to form a dough, there will come a point where you will find it too hard to use a spoon or spatula so use your hands in a claw like manner to mix, and fold over in the bowl until the dough is roughly formed

• Knead on a lightly oiled surface do not add extra flour! Use sunflower oil

• Knead for 7-10 minutes, add water 1 tablespoon at a time and knead until the water has been mixed in before adding any more

• The dough after mixing should very wet and sticky, it will take 2 minutes at least for white and a lot longer for wholemeal dough to become manageable during kneading
  
  
  

First Rise or Bulk Fermentation

• Cover the rising dough in cling film in a well oiled bowl, use sunflower oil as it has little flavour to taint the dough, flip the ball of dough so it is covered in the oil before covering
  
  
• Using cold water, it should take 90 minutes for the dough to be ready

• To test if the dough has risen use two wet fingers to gently press about 1 inch into the dough leaving 2 holes, if they remain then the dough has risen enough as it doesn't have any more energy to fill the holes, if it fills in then it needs more time, so keep checking and testing every 5 minutes. If the holes collapse then it has over risen, there no need to panic as we just take time off the proofing time. For example if it has over risen by 10 minutes, we reduce time that the dough proofs in the tin by 10 minutes and put it into the oven sooner.

Shaping and Proving.

• Turn on the oven to preheat, make sure the shelves are in the correct place to fit the tin and enough room above the bread while it bakes.

• To knock back dough, punch the dough while it is still in its bowl,tip it out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead for 15-30 seconds.

• For a tin loaf, this video will show how to shape the dough for the tin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx5I5O_RoeI

• To make a cob or bread rolls, lightly oil a baking tray and cut baking parchment/paper to size  and place onto the tray. For rolls tear away equal amounts of dough (measure the dough and divide by how many rolls you want, 500g makes 10-12 rolls), roll the small ball of dough and place onto the tray to prove for 30 minutes.

• For a cob loaf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxfZ4AY803E

• Cover with a clean dry tea towel and leave to prove for 30 minutes, to tell if it is done, gently press using your small finger in the corner of the dough and make a small indentation, if the indentation fills back in then the dough needs more time, if it doesn’t then it is ready for the oven (30 minutes is about right)

• Use a sharp serrated knife, dough lame or a grignettes to cut the top of the loaf in a horizontal line, start of gently and allow the blade to cut through the skin of the dough and allow the dough a few moments to open up before cutting again, you need to cut the slash several times, until the cut is about ¾ -1 inch deep, scoring or cutting the dough controls the spring, releases tension on the surface of the dough and stops the dough from tearing during the baking process, it is vitally important for the overall final bake

• A cob can be cut in a cross or a noughts and crosses grid shape

Baking

• Preheat oven 30 minutes before the bread is ready to be baked (I do it just before I punch down the dough)

• Unless the tin you are using is non-stick, lightly oil the tin with sunflower oil, this also means all of the inside surfaces

• Take care with regards to temperature, for a fan oven it will be 15-20 degrees lower than a conventional oven temperature, be sure to check what oven type the given temperature the recipe is for:

• It might be worth getting an oven thermometer to check the real temperature of your oven and if and where there are any hotspots, but it is best to bake at the front and in the lower half of your oven

• Don’t open the oven door in the first 10 minutes as this is when the oven spring happens and when the crust forms

• The dough will lose 10-12% of it’s weight during baking due to water lose

• Once baking time is up, remove the bread from the tin and out in the oven for another 5-10 minutes to further crisp up the crust

• Tap the bottom to hear a hollow sound like a drum then cool on a rack