I have a question on the use of old dough.  I read somewhere that we can freeze old dough,  which I did to mine, probably about 14 days old. Now I'm taking out to use to try out on my Polaine de Champagne again. 

I took out from my freezer and refridgerator to defrost, not counter top. It looks like the yeast is still active.  Am I doing this right? should I have just defrost it within a short period and use it?  The colour and smell still stays good.

I saw a discussion on refreshing the old dough.  Can I just use it as it is,  throw and mix into my dough or I should at least refresh it first?

just wondered if you have a bread maker? do you use it for everyday use large families or just personal use?

thanks

I've been baking successfully for a few months now, french bread with packaged dried yeast, one loaf every weekday.

Thought I was turning into an expert.

Suddenly my doughs won't rise. No matter how long I leave them.

And they don't suddenly explosively rise and fall down again while I'm not watching. They don't rise. At least as best I can judge.

I've proved my yeast and it is excellent, works no problem.

The ambient temperature around here recently has been usually better than 32C - 89F.

The only things I can think of is this ambient temperature - would that be too hot for the dough to rise, too hot for the yeast?

Or the flour. I use 25kg bags and this one is down near the bottom quarter and has been in use over about a month. It, too, would be at ambient temperature.

Could the flour be no good for dough?

When I first turn it out of the mixing bowl to begin kneading it I find it feels heavy and lifeless straight away. Where I am accustomed to my dough feeling light, airy,  springy.

When I put it back in the bowl for the first rise it feels like a lump of lead.

When I look at it half an hour later it looks like, feels like, it has a dry skin on it and though there's no holes in the surface it looks like sort of 'pitted' under the surface, like it had risen and collapsed.

Looks like temperature to me, on reflection as writing this. Could I get some more opinions, please, from the knowledgeable and experienced?

 regards,

 ab  :)

Hi everyone. I'm having trouble getting my dough out of the bowl/container without it sticking a great deal, despite spraying with Pam or greasing with butter. I think it's degassing my precious dough (I make pain a l'ancienne) and leading to less full baguettes. I usually let the dough rise in plastic tuperware containers. Any tips for how to solve this? Thanks!

I'm up in British Columbia, Canada. We have a grocery store chain called Superstore. Their bakery sometimes produces a Primavera bun which my family fight over! It has cheese and peppers, onion, garlic and oregano. My breadmaker (B&D2300) has the most pathetic recipe book ever and I've had no luck finding a decent dough recipe on the internet (half an hour of searching). It's amazing how many recipes don't tell you how big a loaf it makes.

Can anyone help with a decent dough recipe? My B&D wants me to use sour cream and some other ingredient I've never heard of being put in bread. I want to just use the stuff I normally have in my home, not make some special trip to the grocery store every time I want some dough.

Prefer whole wheat recipes but we love the Primavera's enough to use any dough recipe!

Thanks, folks! I'm a rookie here and appreciate any help you can offer.

Tom (t2ieb@hotmail.com)

Here is a short Pizza Baker video titled "Naturally Risen".  I received it from Pizzatherapy.com.  Enjoy!

http://pizzatherapy.com/naturallyrisen.htm

Good deal, or not?

I'm planning on offering $400 for the mixer in the classified ad.  It comes with a dough hook and two 20 quart mixing bowls.

It appears to be 15-20 years old to me.

http://london.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-business-industrial-3-SPEED-MIXER-W0QQAdIdZ148670717

I am having trouble with consistancey of my doughs, especially pizza dough.  I stopped using bread flour because my dough was getting too tough to stretch and was very resilient.  I have been using the same recipe for 5 years, and the past two i have had to change the recipe twice.  I went from all bread flour to all ap flour, way too wet.  then i went to 50/50 ap/tipo('OO'), and increased the oil to soften the dough a bit.  This recipe came out great, then the other day I had to add an additional 2.5# of flour, mind you the base recipe calls for 7#.  I cannot figure out what is going wrong.  Any help is appreciated.

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

I had great success with overnight retarding of my ciabatta dough.  The flavor was sweet and nutty, the crust turned to a beautiful golden brown, and I got great big holes.  I thought that trying an overnight stay in the fridge for my rustic bread would yield similar results.  But I tried it this Saturday and my dough ended up with small uniform air pockets, and lacked in the rich develoepd taste of the ciabatta.

So I'm wondering what's the secret to overnight retarding of dough?  How long does it need to warm back up?  Should you knead once then put in the fridge, or knead twice and form?  Should you use a poolish, as I did, or just mix all the ingredients and then retard the dough?

I think this method has a lot of promise, but I'm wondering how everyone else does it.  Many thanks!

-Peter