I like a chewy bread and chewy cookies. I have been trying to make chewy cookies based on Alton Brown's Chewy cookie recipe but if I alter the ingredients just a bit, more sugar, more butter, etc I always seem to loose the chewy part.  He uses bread flour which adds more gluten and basically he melts the butter instead of the the usual creaming method.  He claims that bread flour will absorb more liquid from the melted butter making more gluten. 

I know gluten is key here even in bread, but the details still seem to allude me.  Why is it that kneading bread a long time is a good thing and making cookies is a bad thing if the end goal is chewiness from gluten?

I have read a lot of  posted all over the Internet for the secret to chewiness but they seem all over the map.  Anything from adding sour cream, honey, corn syrup, brown sugar to more water, less water, more kneading, no kneading. 

Can anyone explain or straighten this out for me?

Can anyone share a formula for a truly fantastic olive bread? The baker at my farmers market makes the most delicious kalamata olive bread. It's soft and chewy inside with tons of kalamatas. The crust is golden brown and very crisp. This bread is fantastic eaten out of hand, toasted, for sandwiches, or my favorite, for egg-in-a-hole. The bread itself is not very sour so I doubt it's a true sourdough. I sent the baker an email hoping she could point me in the right direction for a formula (yeast raised? starter based?). I wasn't asking for a recipe, just for some pointers, but all she said was, "come to the next market and we can chat." Well, I want olive bread now and the market doesn't open for the season until May!

Any ideas would be welcome. :) Elissa

Hi all,

I'm new here and I'm still at that stage where I'm excited by oven spring (despite my lack of pizza stone) so if this is something obvious, bear with me. In other words, I've only recently graduated from baking bricks ;).

Ok, I've tried this recipe several times but I can't seem to get rid of this swirled look. Those spots are a little tougher than the white areas and tend to feel doughy when you pull of the crumb and roll it between your finger. I"ve had this happen with my other breads lately too. Also, it was much chewier than expected, almost too chewy for my tastes. Is sourdough supposed to be like that?

This was a fairly sticky dough and I did very little kneading. I just mixed (by hand), let it rest for 30min, kneaded/folded for a couple minutes and let it ferment. I folded it twice during the ferment, pre-shaped (10 min) and then final shaped. I admit that I skipped the window pane test and a second fold might not have been necessary. I let it cool completely before taking this photo and at no point did it seem like my bread had a "skin" before baking. It was at 210F when I took it out of the oven (unless my instant read is off). The dough was super sticky going into the ferment, easy to handle during the folds and then sticky again by the time I was shaping it (under developed/over developed?). I used:

8oz fed starter, 12oz water, 2.5 tsps salt, 1 tbsp sugar, 2tsps yeast and 4 -5c flour (depending on the weather in NE Ohio)

(This loaf I handled too much during the shaping, but it's from the same batch)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I'm almost embarrassed to stick this up here since I've spent a good number of hours looking over the various posts and astonishingly holey bread on this website, but I guess I've got to start somewhere :).

I have some bread recipes that I am trying to "fix".  Whole wheat, multigrain and white sandwich loaf recipes specifically.  They currently yield very airy, light loaves.  This may please some but I am interested in chewy, relatively dense loaves with buttery crusts.  The current recipies produce crusts that are light and tear easily.. I am looking for more "chew" than "tear".  Any suggestions?  Do I need to type the recipe or does something jump to mind that I need to adjust, ie more sugar, more oil, more proofing time?

Many thanks!

Hi All,

Well, I've been bitten by the baking bug and have made my first loaf ever, a baguette from the Crust and Crumb cookbook that turned out way better than I expected.  While I'm pleased with the results, I noticed that the baguette wasn't nearly as crusty on its underside.  I'm thinking that not having a cooking stone or a baguette pan kept the underside from developing properly.  But perhaps there is another reason?  Any tips here would be greatly appreciated. Also, as seen in the photos, the inside was a bit dense, a bit chewy.  I may have over kneeded or distrurbed the inner air pockets somehow?  What would cause this? 

Either way, for a first effort I'm quite pleased and am glad to be a part of this great community!

Miz