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ilovetodig's picture
ilovetodig

My Favorite Yeast Rolls--super easy

I have baked bread for the last 36 years and have found this forum extremely interesting and educational.  I decided to share this recipe because it is so easy and versatile, yet the rolls are delicious.  After preparing the dough, you can either put the dough into a covered bowl in the fridge and use when and as much as needed.  Or you can go ahead and make into rolls and refrigerate covered for 2-3 days, then when needed, remove from the fridge and let sit (uncovered) until they rise--usually a couple of hours. Or you can make into rolls, let rise an hour or so and then bake.  I don't even remember where this recipe came from, but I have made it hundreds of times.  This recipe makes about 48 dinner rolls.

2 pkg.                 yeast

3 cups                 water, warm

3/4 cup                butter or margarine (or mixed), melted but not hot

1 Tbs.                  salt

3/4 cup                sugar

2                         eggs, room temp.

9 to 9 1/2 cups      all-purpose flour

1 stick                  mellted butter, margarine or oil combination

Dissolve yeast in water.  Beat sugar, butter and eggs together.  Combine yeast and sugar and add to egg mixture.  Stir in salt and enough flour to make a firm, but sticky dough.  With floured hands and adding a little flour as needed, make into approximately 48 rolls placing into baking pan which has been sprayed with non-stick spray and has approximately 3 Tbs. melted butter or oil in it.  Turn to coat rolls.  If desired, brush with more melted butter.  Let rise approximately 1 hour or cover with sprayed plastic wrap or foil and place into refrigerator.   When ready to cook, preheat oven to 350* for approximately 30 minutes or until brown. 

                                                             

 

subfuscpersona's picture
subfuscpersona

What's the right grain for chappati flour?

I home mill my own flour and need to know what is the correct grain to buy to make whole wheat chapati and other breads that are cooked on the stove top using a griddle (or cast iron frying pan).

According to my Indian cook books, chapati flour is called *atta*;  this is generally  defined as  a very fine whole wheat flour milled from the entire wheat berry. My problem - what kind of wheat is used for chapati flour?

When I research it on the 'net, I get articles that say it is hard wheat  or durum wheat. However, my cookbook "The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking" (by Yamuna Devi) says atta is made from *soft* wheat flour and goes on to suggest mixing two parts whole wheat *pastry* flour with 1 part unbleached white flour or *cake* flour if you can't get imported atta flour. This certainly suggests that *soft* wheat, not hard, would be the better grain choice.

I use a Nutrimill grain mill which can produce a finely milled flour. But what grain should I use - hard wheat? soft wheat? durum wheat?

Looking forward to your answers - thanks

shakleford's picture
shakleford

Vollkornbrot

This weekend I finally made a loaf of vollkornbrot, which I'd been planning to do for some time.  It was a lot of fun, and let me try several things that I had not done before:

  • I used the formula from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, which includes preparing a mash on the first day.  A mash is a thin paste of flour or whole grains and water, kept at 150 for several hours.  The goal of this is to produce what I think can best be described as enzyme craziness.
  • I've been on a rye kick lately (rye sourdoughs are currently my favorite type of bread), but had not tried anything more than around 2/3 rye.  While a 2/3 rye dough is a lot different than a wheat dough, the vollkornbrot dough was much different than either of them.
  • I bought a grain mill around a month ago, and while I've been very happy with it, I've been using it almost exclusively to produce finely-ground wheat flour.  I'd been holding off using it for rye, as I still have a fair amount of store-bought rye flour to use up.  However, the vollkornbrot recipe calls for coarsely-ground rye, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to break out the rye berries I bought.  For the mash, I actually produced what I would classify as cracked rye (the recipe calls for rye chops), sifting out the smaller pieces to use as part of the flour for the starter.
Day 1 consisted of preparing the mash mentioned above, along with a starter.  Having never made a mash before, I can't really say if mine turned out correctly, but it was gelatinous and quite pleasant-tasting.  I've been maintaining both a rye and a whole wheat starter for a couple of months now, and have had good success with both, but I used the rye starter in this recipe just to make the end result 100% rye.  Since the expanded starter was made of coarsely-ground rye it did not rise much, but smelled terrific.  The mash and starter are pictured below: 

On Day 2, I combined the above ingredients along with a good deal more rye flour and a few other items (including, somewhat surprisingly to me, sunflower seeds).  On a whim, I used a medium-coarse grind on this additional flour as well.  Reinhart lists molasses and cocoa powder as additional optional ingredients, but I decided to leave them out in this batch.  After mixing the final dough, I let it proof - the rise was pretty limited, as one might expect, but it was noticeable.  Reinhart's instructions have this bread being cooked in an open pan, but based on my reading, I wanted to try it with a lid.  However, I do not have a Pullman pan and have sworn off buying any additional kitchen accessories for at least two months.  Instead, I used the oft-recommended trick of covering the pan with a baking sheet (weighed down with a cast iron skillet) to roughly approximately a lidded pan.

After around two hours of baking (including rotating the loaf after the first hour so that it cooked more evenly), I pulled the below item out of the oven.  I was a little bit disappointed with its appearance, as the flour that I can carefully sprinkled inside the pan and on the top of the loaf had mostly disappeared and there were not as many cracks as I was expecting.

The hardest part of the process was still to come:  waiting until Day 3 to sample the loaf.  Fortunately, that was today.  I'd wrapped the loaf in a towel after it cooled yesterday, and when I took it out this evening, it smelled terrific.  Cutting through that crust was a bit of a challenge (as expected), but once I made it through, the crumb was quite soft with a very unique texture.  Reinhart says that using a mash gives the crumb a creamy texture, and while I didn't really know what that meant before trying this bread, I have to say that "creamy" is probably the word for it.  The taste was very complex - it didn't have much of a rye flavor, but I could detect the sourness from the starter, the sweetness from the mash, a hint of the taste of the sunflower seeds, and many other factors that I can't quite place.  For the first time I can remember, I wish that a loaf I made had more crumb and less crust.  I will also be interested to see how the flavors continue to develop over the next several days.  I've included a photo of the crumb below.

Overall, this was a very satisfying bake for me.  I love trying new ingredients and techniques, and when they actually produce something this tasty, it's even better!  I will definitely be baking more vollkornbrot in the future, although I think I may first try a few of the lighter recipes I've been neglecting.  I also plan to save some of this loaf to provide altus, perhaps for Reinhart's Bavarian Pumpernickel recipe.  In addition, I'm now more interested than ever in trying my mill out on different grains and coarser grinds.  So many breads, so little time...

Janedo's picture
Janedo

Roasted flour in bread, anyone tried?

I'd like to do some testing with roasted flour in a bread recipes. That is taking flour, laying it on a baking tray and roasting it until it darkens and becomes nutty in flavour.

Has anyone tried or know of any recipes I could try? I'm not sure what proportion would be needed to actually get good taste and I'm assuming the flour loses it's ability to develop gluten. I thought maybe using it like rye in a 'pain de campagne'.

The baker I spoke about in my blog entry makes a pain rustique using it. I have seen a couple articles mentioning it.

Jane 

junehawk's picture
junehawk

Pugliese

Hi. 

 

I did a search for this but didn't find relevant information.  I am making pugliese for the first time, following The Bread Bible's recipe called Brianna's Pugliese.  The Kitchenaid is kneading right now but the dough seems very wet. It's not coming off the sides of the bowl at all and I'm wondering if this is normal.  The recipe says the dough will be very sticky but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be THIS sticky.  Any info would be greatly appreciated!

 

June 

PaddyL's picture
PaddyL

Wow, oven spring!

Absolutely magnificent oven spring on my two totally-commercial-yeast-free panned white loaves still in the oven!  I know "oven spring" can be overrated, but I never expected any and I've got it anyway.  Also my experiment with the buttermilk plant was successful and I have a good supply of buttermilk, though it's a little thin; I'm going to try some scones with it tonight.  I refreshed that with some reconstituted skim milk powder and it's sitting in the warmest place in the house, on top of the fridge.  I never would have tried the buttermilk plant if I hadn't got into sourdough, and it was the people here who inspired me, so a big thank you to TheFreshLoaf!

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Kneading surface

I currently knead dough, form loaves, etc. on a silicon mat placed on my tile kitchen counter. I've been looking at a jazzy pastry board made of hardwood. But, I already have a marble slab I use for pastry.

 Is there any down side to using the marble surface for working with bread dough? Any particular advantage of a wood surface over marble (besides the weight)?

Thanks.

David

ClimbHi's picture
ClimbHi

New "Kitchen Gadget"

Here's a pic of our latest toy -- a wood-fired oven ala Alan Scott. It makes wonderful bread and pizza as well as other tasty things. For example, after the bread is done, the oven is just right for loading up with a large pork butt or two. 12-14 hrs. later, perfect pulled pork to put on those fresh sandwich buns!

I'm new to this forum and I'm finding lots of useful information on breadmaking. All but what kind of mixer to buy, that is. Based on what I've read here, it'll be either a new KA or a Bosch. (It seems that no matter what I choose, 50% will be sure I made the wrong choice!) ;-)

ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA

 

Wood-Fired Oven

Wood-fired Oven 2Wood-fired, Pizza

 

Wild-Yeast's picture
Wild-Yeast

Sourdough X-Files...,

Morning All,

I tried something that is a bit over the edge but now that it worked I'll admit to it.

I cooked a sourdough batard in a large Reynolds Oven Bag. The dough was proofed in a cotton lined basket, transfered to baking parchment, slashed and then carefully slid into the oven bag. The oven bag was tied shut with the plastic ties that came with the bags. The whole was then placed on the hot baking stone and slid into the oven to bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (the bags temperature limit). The timer was set for 20 minutes after which the bag and parchment were removed and the loaf continued cooking on the stone for an additional 15 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

The spring rise was more than adequate with the crust browning quite a bit during the last phase of baking. Although very grayish-tan it was astonishingly chewy but not quite as crunchy as I'd like. The crumb taste and texture is almost creamy with a nutty background and wonderfully chewy with only a hint of sourness. I've got to think about this a little longer as the shock that it actually worked as well as it did is still clanging around in my head. I've nearly eaten half the loaf already just tasting it out. I'd take pictures but it's much later than I'd like having to rise bright eyed early tomorrow morning so it will be deferred till tomorrow.

By the by, if you do this make sure that the bag has plenty of clearence to the top of the oven. It will puff up with steam and stay that way. Also make sure that the end with the bag tie doesn't touch the ovens heating element at the top of the oven.

Wild-Yeast

possum-liz's picture
possum-liz

Help!! I want to bake 100% rye sourdough

HELP!!! I bake a lot for my friends and one of them want's 100% rye sourdough (she's a food purist).  I bake different sourdoughs all the time based on my white starter and feeding up to what ever type I want.  BUT my 100% rye is more like a brick. 

Any recipes/suggestions woud be much appreciated.  I'm in Australia so flour brands are different. For those Aussies among us I use Demeter's light and whole rye flours. I also have whole rye grain ,cracked rye and rolled rye to play with. 

Hope to hear from somebody out there.

Liz

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