Hi members,

A question about active dry yeast.  I have a yeast which is mentioned here , that I have to dilute this dry yeast in a warm water using 1oz sugar for each 6 oz of dry yeast.

Any idea how much water I have to use?  and any conversion from 1 oz sugar equal with tsp?

Thank you..

I just got a new bread machine and am having a hard time finding recipes for it. It makes a 2, 2.5 and 3 pound loaf. Most of the recipes on the internet don't tell me how many pounds they make and most of the good ones are to small. I was wondering how ou go about converting a 1.5 lb loaf into a  2 or 3 lb loaf. Any help would be appriciated

I am working on my first pandoros for X-mas, following Meggie Glezer's recipe. In this she calls for osmotolerant instant yeast. I just can't get my hands on that here, but I did get some wonderful fresh yeast that I want to use instead.

I'm a bit uncertain about the conversion though.... None of the conversions I have managed to google out of my computer mention how to convert osmotolerant instant yeast to fresh yeast. My guess is, when the standard conversion from "normal"  instant yeast  to fresh yeast is roughly times 3, should I put a bit more than that since osmotolerant instant yeast is the strongest of them all? Should I go more towards times 4?

The recipe also carries a sourdough, so the fresh yeast won't be on it's own, and I don't want to overdo it with the yeast...

Is there any one out there who could advice me? The amount called for in the recipe is 0.25 to 0.5 teaspoon of osmotolerant instant dry yeast, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.

hoping to hear from you :-)

Hi there,

This is my first blog from across the atlantic and i wonder if somebody could help me with conversions.   I am looking to make the White Sandwich Bread from Crust and Crumb and it asks for 4 cups (16 ounces) of ferment and 3 1/2 cups (16 ounces) of flour. Why are the ounces the same and the cups different?  Depending upon the ferment does this then make the conversion different

The cups i have here are 250ml

thanks

Hi,

I'm a newbie who's created an OpenOffice/MSExcel speadsheet for calculating Baker's Percentages.

It calculates ingredients based on the weight of the finished bread desired and displays them in lbs, oz, gms, cups, tblsps, and tsps.

If you'd like to try it, use it, critique it, whatever send me a message.

Jack

I'm still tying to make baguettes and having a lot of fun doing it.  I thought I'd try Anis Bouabsa's recipe as described by David (dmsnyder) here on Jane's (janedo) blog/page/thread(?): http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8066/great-baguette-quest-n%C2%B03-anis-bouabsa. After converting grams to ounces to cups, or something along those lines-- I describe my "process" there-- I ended up using 1-3/4 cups of ap flour, and 6 oz of water, plus the yeast and the salt.  The ghetto comes into play because I used the everyday Pillsbury AP flour instead of the fancy stuff (I spent all my money on KA bread and white whole wheat flour), add to that that I measure by volume (I looked at scales the other day, I'm working on it) and that I spent more than 21 hours-- actually, I'm not sure how long it spent in the fridge, just that it was a little more than the 21 hours, but not much more than a few hours more, if that.

I ran into some familiar problems.

I've been proofing, shaping into baguettes on the pan that I put into the oven, letting them rise and then baking them without moving them.  My "shaping" skills leave a lot to be desired, I think my problem has to do mostly with how I'm not good at putting flour on the countertop-- so far, i put too much on and instead of rolling it just slides aroung and i end up pulling out the ends-- next time, i just won't put flour on the countertop.

This time, I tried to "pre-shape" (or something like that) the loaves so I did the push-fold-turn-push-fold seal thingy I've seen on youtube-- actually, if I'm stubborn about making mistakes, I hold this to blame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AOSuKWJEPI&feature=fvw-- and then I rolled it-- so basically I shaped the baguette.  Then after an hour I shaped it again-- well, first I stretched it of of the parchment paper which is stuck to (I'm thinking it might be a bad idea to let it rise in a steamy oven, which I would do so that I wouldn't have to put anything over it which would then stick, but since it's sticking and messing up anyway...)  So I tried to reshape it again and roll it out on a lot of flour but I more slid it around instead.  It was also very stretchy, so I had to cut it in half and made two "baguettes" instead of one.

I also tried putting a cookie sheet in the oven to warm up before putting the loaves on it. Not surprisingly I made a mess of that and when I tried to slide the loaves onto the hot cookie sheet they slid into each other so they have a soft spot on one side-- actually though, I got what I think was some oven spring out of it... Or that may just have been because I forgot to score the loaves :S.

Anyway, here are the results of my little comedy of errors:

I couldn't find my camera last night so by the time i did we'd finished off half of one loaf.

I'm pretty happy about the crumb, though it seems to be somewhat irregularly irregular.

I'd have been ever so happy if the whole thing had come out like the right half of the above cross section... actually it might have (I forgot to mention that when i went to slide it I noticed that the tip was off the end of the parchment sheet so I tucked it in so maybe that's why the bubbles are so little.

As far as taste goes, it's not terribly fantastic.  It might have to do with the flour's brand, that the flour wasn't terribly fresh, or that I'm still trying to figure out how to balance out the salt and on this occasion I tried to guess on the miserly side.

I used more than the cup of flour I'm fond of, so for my next trick, I'll try it with 1 cup of flour and i'll figure out the rest of the ratios.  I think I'll also buy some KA brand ap flour.  I'll do the 21 hour cold rise... as far as shaping goes, I could take it out of the fridge and shape on the parchment paper i'll bake it on... but I think i'll take it out of the fridge and let it rest as a ball since I don't know what "pre-shaping" is.  I will not, however, put it in a steamy oven-- I'll cover it with oiled cling wrap instead and then a damp cloth... uy, i think it's gonna stick-- anyway, let me look some stuff up before I try...

Sergio

I'm going to try and convert a volume based recipe to a weight based one. I've read the posts here about measuring out a cup and weighing it (makes sense to me) and to see whether the recipe author offers any suggestions for how to measure flour by volume.

The book I'm using does not.

So, should I pour from the flour into the cup, then level, or spoon from the bag then level, or sift from the bag, then level?

Thanks.

Jeremy

This weekend I baked 4 French Bread boules (a recipe by Danielle Forestier from a PBS segment with Julia Child). Iv'e always had good success following this recipe, but these loaves were great. They did not collapse during the final proof. I scored them in one stroke rather than my normal hacking several times. The crust was golden, crisp and actually "sang" as I pulled them from the ovens (I had begun to think you guys were all high when you mentioned this could happen). The crumb was perfect, and they tasted great.

I kinda wish I had taken pictures, but you all know what a good loaf looks like. Some of you get those kind of results repeatedly. While I'm still very much a novice, I finally had the courage to follow the advise of some of those of you I consider the superstars (Mini-O, Mike Avery, Floyd, Susan from San Diego, and a bunch of others); I still weighed everything but trusted what I 'felt'.

I held back some of the flour because the hydration seemed just right without it. The kneading time changed a bit to suit the mixer I was using. I let the first rise go a bit longer than called for because the bread was not ready based on conditions in my kitchen. The final proof went a bit longer for the same reason.

It's not like I climbed Mt Everest or anything, but I turned a corner in my baking experiance. I guess that's why a lot of us bake bread. It's a personal sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, and has the added benefit of being able to share the end result with family/friends.

If I ever get a good as a some of you, I hope I am as patent and willing to share as you all have been with many of us that ask the same rookie questions again and again. Thanks for the help! This is a great forum.

Scott (Phxdog).

I found a site that lists conversions for all sizes of pans.

http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Cake-Pan-Size-Conversions/Detail.aspx

--Pamela

Someone just gifted me with a bread book called "The New Bread Book" by Ursula Ferrigno, which I do really appreciate, but all the recipes call for FRESH YEAST, such as 1/4 oz(10G) crumbled, is there some sort of a conversion to instant or rapid rise yeast?  I really do not want to search out a bakery, not any in my loacal area, to get some, and I've read it does not last very long, any ideas?  Thanks. Russ