Made these crown challahs today that have an apple butter filling.  Taste wonderful, but look like they exploded.  Any suggestions on what is causing this?  Too much oven rise?  How do I avoid that?  It is a woven loaf not a pull apart bread which it looks like.

The one on the left is what it should look like.  I made all of these and do not know why some look good and others look like they exploded.

Many challahs

Sharon

www.thebraidedloaf.com 

Looking for old recipe for a sweet bun called "Haystacks." They were plain, sweet, yeasty, yellowish (like an egg dough) and shaped like a rounded haystack with a plain confectioner's sugar icing and toasted coconut sprinkled on top. They were bigger than a hot cross bun and smaller than a hard roll. They were not heavy or doughy and had only a dinner roll type crust. We would buy them back in the 1950's in a bakery in Bridgeport, CT for Sunday breakfast. There were a lot of different ethnic bakeries there so they might be based on some sort of braided European bread.

I can still smell the inside of that bakery and remember my fascination with the bread slicing machine! Anyhelp would be wonderful - S

I have been baking challah bread for about a year and am planning to make about 30 next weekend.  In order to bake a few a day ahead I have been looking into some natural products that extend the bread's shelf life.  Has anyone used dastatic malt powder in their yeast breads?  Does it really help keep it fresher longer?

I would love some input.

Sharon

www.thebraidedloaf.com

From a marathon baking session last weekend. The whole rundown is here. 

Laura 

Anyone know where I can buy fresh cake yeast in the Atlanta area. Supermarkets don;t know what I'm talikng about.

Thought Whole Foods would have it but no luuck.

Thanks

Recently relocated to Atlanta for the NE where I could buy fresh/cake yeast for my adventures in baking. Have not been able to find it in the Atlanta area. No problem in the NE.

I have asked at the supermarket, but they do not understand and point me to the packages of dry yeast.

Have been using dry yeast, but find the cake yeast produces bettter flavor, to me at least. I understand professional bakers use fresh yeast so there must be something to it.

Anyone in the Atlanta and surrounding area found direct me to a store which sells cake yeast.

Thanks

After baking whole-wheat and rye breads exclusively for about six months, I decided this weekend to try my hand once again at the elusive baguette. I returned to my old, trusted source, Dan Leader's Bread Alone, but also consulted the all-wise Internet, just to refresh my memory on all the tips and tricks to getting the perfect baguette.

That's when I ran across this recipe at the King Arthur site. The pictures at the top of the PDF were so exquisite that I wondered if, perhaps, I had come across the Holy Grail of French Stick recipes. I compared it to Leader's recipe, and after figuring out the baker's percentages, I discovered they were almost identical except for two points.

First, the KA recipe calls for using 100% of the prepared poolish in the final dough, whereas Leader's calls for 1/2 the poolish, but makes it up with more flour and water. Not so big a deal, in my opinion. I would rather not waste all that poolish anyway. 

However, the second difference was a big one: KA's recipe called for over FOUR TIMES as much yeast in the final dough. It works out to be about 1.5 tsp, whereas Leader's recipe calls for 1/4 tsp (1/2 tsp if it's moist yeast). Even the percentage of salt is the same.

So, I guess my question is, who's right? And I'm sure the answer will be, "whatever works for you!." Still, I can't help but wonder why there is such a difference in yeast quantity in otherwise similar recipes. Is it possible that the KA recipe over-compensates for the possibility of weak yeast? Does the extra yeast even make a difference over the course of three hours? Perhaps they are keeping up their sales? Or maybe they're using a different kind of yeast? Perhaps I'm looking into this way too deeply!

I would love to hear some opinions on this. What do you folks think?

Happy Baking! (And Happy Independence Day for those of you in the States!)

Joseph 

My starter has been active but no leavening after seven days.  Started with 1C flour and 1C water.  Replacing half of the starter w/ fresh AP flour and distilled water every 12 hours or so.  I get small bubbles and hooch but no big rise.  I'd read a tip to use your oven as a proofing box by turning on the oven light to heat the inside.  I am reading 78ºF on the middle rack where I have my jar of starter and now have about 1/4" of leavening above my mark.  Good stuff!

Room temp in our house is around 68-69 so this heat for the starter seems welcome.  Wish I woulda started day one in the oven with the 78ºF.  Imagine it'd be further along by now.

Hans

P.S. - the next time I make a starter, it will be with 2T of water and equal weight of flour.  I am using 1/2C of each and it's been a bit wasteful when I could achieve the same with smaller quantities and bulk up later when I want to bake bread.

I am contemplating making a sweet bun recipe that was taken from the Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook 1970 edition (I believe it was published in the USA?). It calls for "a cake of yeast".

I've searched around the internet trying to find out just how much a "cake of yeast" weighs. Most sites I've found agree and say that a cake of yeast weighs .6 oz; one says it weighs .06 oz (!) and another says it weighs 1 oz.

This would mean an equivalent of either 3tsp, 1/3tsp, or 3.4 tsp active dry yeast. Rather a large difference, I'd sya...

I'm guessing that .06oz .6oz is the right one but which is it, please?

-Elizabeth, in Toronto Canada where compressed yeast is not the easiest thing to find; one local deli sells cakes of yeast in 50 and 100gm pieces.

P.S. DON'T get me started on the use of loose measurement terms "packets", "packages", "cakes", "some", "dollop" ...

(edited to fix typo)

I'm beginning to think my yeast is on steroids...

Given my hectic schedule, what with work and home and hubby and 3 kids going at least 4 different places, I have often stowed dough in the fridge to buy some time...as well as develop the flavors.  However, I've noticed a pattern that I haven't seen discussed on the forums yet:

If I put the dough in the fridge before first fermentation (knead it and fridge it), I get very little rise in the fridge.  But if any rise has happened at room temp and then I fridge it, either during first fermentation or proofing, I get overdevelopment...by the time the dough has come to room temp again, it's huge and I might as well degas ( the action, not the artist!) and shape from scratch, otherwise it's impossible to slash and I get almost no oven rise.

Doesn't matter if it's yeast, or yeast-starter combo.  I do the combo because my starter, altho bubbly and tasty, has never really risen...and I seldom have the extended stretches of time to let a straight starter do it's thing...but this will be another posting.

So...is it my fridge? (Which has been having it's quirks now, as well!) I store the dough on the bottom shelf--it's a bottom-freezer version--which is coolest.

Am I using too much yeast/starter?  If straight dough, yeast is typically 2 tsp for a 1 1/2 to 2 lb loaf; if yeast-starter, I use 1 tsp yeast and about 25-30% starter for the same size loaf (about 4-5 c flour).  I am basing the starter percents on The Metropolitan Bakery Book (Metro. is a Philly-based artisan bakery) which suggested using 30-40% starter for max flavor and keeping quality.  And since I had a bathtub full of the stuff...

Are there other issues I should be aware of? 

Should I work on my organizational skills, developing a schedule for proofing, retarding, etc?  In my earlier life, I was scheduled rigidly, but having been knocked around by life and being married to Mr. Spontaneity, I've lost that ability ;-).  The thought of reverting to a schedule makes me cringe, but if I have to for the sake of good bread...!   

Windi