I guess pillow soft is a good description of what I want to achieve. When you squeeze-test a package of these buns, they feel like a pillow you would sleep on.Depresses easily but has bounceback. I'm not talking "store-bought" guar gum,air injected buns,stick-like-wallpaper paste-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth kind of buns. I have seen soft sandwich buns at a local organic, flour,water,yeast,salt,starter kind of bakery.It is easy to get a bite without all the filling squishing out.  Of course, they don't want to talk about technique-then I wouldn't buy their buns. My bread crumb turns out chewier-it's good but I want to be able to achieve the soft bun.

I have sifted this site numberous times and I'm missing something because I'm not able to achieve this. I have tried adding:potatoes, milk,eggs and oil after various posters suggested that. Delicious experiments but still not there. I have to believe it is a technique or hydration issue rather than an ingredient issue. I have always used either Better for Bread (Gold MedalBrand) flour or AP flour for these endeavors. I also use a KitchenAid stand mixer and favor using sourdough with a little additional yeast due to time constraints (I bake on weekends).

So, how does one achieve a pillowy crumb and a crust that is thin and easy to bite off without being tough?

I tried Méteils au bleu this past weekend. After reading up about this bread on TFL here, I was a little nervous how well it will rise, it doesn't help that the text in the book said "weighted down by all the cheese, the bread will bake below the pan". In the end, it was all good, nothing to worry about. My little starter worked like a trooper, those are some yummy, well risen, flavorful little breads! I used KA Sir Lancelot flour and Arrowhead Mills Organic Rye Flour. my starter is fed with bread flour at 100% hydration, and I adjusted water in the levin starter accordingly.

I should begin this post by saying that today was one of those perfect baking days where everything just came together: my "three T's," Timing, Technique, and Taste.  Ususally one of them gives me trouble especially when I attempt a new recipe, but I think that because I had all day free with no commitments I could relax and really focus on each task as it came along.

Ever since I made a batch of candied orange peel awhile back using a recipe from a link provided by xaipete (http://leitesculinaria.com/recipes/cookbook/candied_orange_peel.html), I have been dying to make stollen.  So yesterday I finally committed to the idea and began last night by making a batch of creme de amande ahead of time.  I got the recipe, which can be completed in a day, from Bertinet's Crust.

Having never eaten or made stollen before I welcome any suggestions.  There wasn't a very good picture in Crust so I googled it and there were so many variations that I'm not sure exactly what it was supposed to come out like.

Candied Peel ready to be chopped.

Filling mixture.

Filling to be folded into dough.

The messiest part is about to begin!

Ahhh, safely in the bowl.

Creme de amande and marzipan ready to be folded in.

Beginning final proof.

Proofed stollens go into the ovens.

Ready to top.

Glazed with butter and powdered sugar.

A little taste of Christmas!

Summer

I have never liked sweet cornbread.  I can't remember ever, until now, having eaten a sweet cornbread that tasted good enough for me to want another piece.  This morning I finished the BBA Challenge assignment for Peter Reinhart's cornbread as published in "The Bread Bakers Apprentice".  It's incredible, in spite of the fact that it calls for granulated sugar, brown sugar and honey.

The full recipe was far too large for our needs so I reduced it by half.  That was fairly easy, until I came to dividing 3 eggs, but using one whole egg and one egg yolk solved that problem.  Baked in an 8 inch (rim to rim measurement) cast iron pan.

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Hi,

I had the very big pleasure of spending the last two weeks in a tiny village on the coast of greece, south and east of Kalamata.

The primary bread at the local grocery store, and every taberna we visited, was the same simple loaf. Oval or torpedo shaped, it had a moderate to fine crumb with white-bread taste (although quite yellow inside) and sesame seeds all over the top.  It did not taste overly milky or egg-y, but more like a loaf with quite basic ingredients.

My kids (and I) really enjoyed this bread.  Does anyone know the name of the bread or have a recipe?

Thanks!

MommaT

Hi there, I'm fairly new to bread making and bake bread by hand. I keep hearing about the perils of using too much or too little water in recipes, however I can't quite find anyone how can give an accurate description of what the dough should feel like if it's right. I'm talking here about a standard sandwhich loaf.

Often if I use exactly what a recipe asks for I can't form a dough ball with all of the flour and have to add more. If as some people say the dought should be moist then I find it gets a shaggy mess and is impossible to knead without adding lots and lots of flour during the kneading process.

I have to say most loaves I bake are perfectly fine, however I'm often disappointed that there aren't bigger and more random pockets of air.

Any one any ideas? (or photos even!)

Andrew

Inspired by Hamelman's book, I've been getting into baking and eating high percentage rye breads in the past few months. Keep in mind that I was born and raised in China, so I was used to those light as air, soft as cotton Asian style breads, while I have baked and loved European style breads, whole grain breads, and sourdough breads for a while, rye is definitely new and different to me. Here are some of my tries and some comments/questions (all of them are from Hamelman's book):

1) 60% Rye with flexseeds, I loved the taste of this bread, but the shaping needed improvement. Had a few blowouts on the sides, and the surface got stuck on the proofing cloth a bit.

2) 70% rye with whole wheat. It was just OK, mostly because I couldn't find rye chops (still can't), so I improvised by using the chopper attachment of my hand mixer to chop up some whole rye berries, and shifting out the powder. It didn't work that well, so the "rye chops" tastes a bit too crunchy even after being soaked all night, also there are some cracking in the crumb, no idea why. Anyone here made this recipe before? Is this bread supposed to be this brick like?

3)Detmolder 90% Rye. That's my favorite one so far! With such high percentage of rye, it's lighter than I expected. Great rye taste. I don't have a bread docker, but I kinda like the irregular crackling on the crust.

4）Vollkornbrot with flaxseeds. I made this one this past Sunday, and waited until today (Tue) to cut in. I still used the same technique for rye chops, but this time I used boiling water to soak it, which helped to soften the texture. I am pretty happy with the taste, moist and good texture from soakers. Boy, is this bread heavy! I used pullman pan like the book suggested, got a tasty, dark, heavy, long piece of brick! :) I am no rye expert, does this look about right for volkornbrot? Both the shape and crumb? It rose quite a bit during the final proofing, but not much in the oven. Did I overproof? Should I have gotten a more dome-ish top, rather than a flat brick?

Next, I want to try the Horst Bandel's black pumpernickel, which intimidates me a little due to the long bake, various soakers, and "too wet" problem documented here on this forum. It also calls for rye chops to be added to the final dough directly without soaking, I need to figure out a way to substitute that since I STILL can't find rye chops. Any suggestions? I can't even find cracked rye locally, just rye berries and rolled rye.

I've carefully avoided the high hydration slack doughs, fearing terrible results like baguettes that look like they were run over and batard-like blobs of baked dough. Little did I know that David's Pain De Campagne would start me on the road to this challenge. It's always good to have someone give me a little push..I'm the scaredy cat, but once I get going, have a good time. You know, like a roller coaster!

I was a little concerned when I saw my fermented dough hadn't doubled in the 21 hours. David's was bubbly and had doubled. Mine looked pretty much the same as when it went in the fridge. I knew my starter was well fed and happy, so what had I done wrong? I had recently made a similar recipe where the fermented dough rose well in a brotform, but when turned out, flattened. The oven spring though, was remarkable. What have I got to lose..so I kept going.

The dough was shaped and then pretty much flattened while proofing. David describes the shaping as lifting and folding the edge closest to you up over the center. Well, it was more like trying to coax/roll the dough up and over, there was no lifting! On final shaping you are supposed to roll the log like loaf to taper the ends. That wasn't happening, I just ended up with a very long flat baguette-like shape. OK, I'll deal with it.

Bake time came and I tried my hand at baguette slashing, which would have been OK if I had started out a little more to the left. I made 2 slashes and ran out of room for the 3rd. Oh, well..My next problem was the loaf was longer than my stone. All right, I'll put it diagonally on the stone. Easier said than done. I had a good 4 inches hanging off the front of the stone..YIKES.. I quickly grabbed a cookie sheet and slide it underneath the parchment paper and coaxed it back farther on the stone. Phew.

The first 15 minutes crawled by and finally I got to open the oven door..ALL RIGHT!! good oven spring. The loaf turned out OK, believe it or not. Still waiting for the taste test.

Now my new goal in breads..to be able to reproduce those beauties that David always turns out.

Thanks David, for sharing your techniques and recipes.

I'll keep truckin'

Betty

Hey everyone! I made my first loaf of bread this past weekend and did it according to the first lesson on this site (simply flour, yeast, salt, water). It came out wonderfully, and I'm so proud of it! My only question is, it seems to leave a sour taste in my mouth after I eat it. Is this common with homemade bread, or is it something in the recipe? Or was it my own doing (very likely the case!).

Thanks everyone! I'm super excited to get baking some more.

Made these loaves by simply extending a wild yeast 100% hydration starter with the gradual addition (over period of 48 hours) of enough flour to create a dough of approx. 70% hydration and adding a bit of salt. 2 hours fermentation after final "feeding" to bring hydration to desired level; folded six times before 1 hour proof, baked on a stone at 500 degrees initial five minutes, (then reducing to 450 degrees) with ten minutes of steam emission from a pan of hot water and brushed with butter at 15 minutes.  Then continued baking to internal temperature of 205 degrees. Crisp crust, delicate crumb, excellent flavor.

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