This topic is for giving other Loafers a heads-up on sales and discounts on baking equipment at Amazon.
If you can, please code the URL with the web-master's commission tag: ?tag=froglallabout-20
You can edit out all the other tags/junk in an Amazon url, basically everything after the ASIN number. Take out the slash "/" immediate after the ASIN, too.
These sales/discounts usually only last 2 or 3 days.
Crazy question, I know. But recently I've been using the heretical "St. Louis cut" on my bagels, and I actually like it a lot.
But of course the shapes of the cuts differ a lot because of the shape. I'm about to bake a new batch of my rye sourdough (using a chocolate starter that gives them great depth of flavor) and I'm wondering if it's possible to make them square or rectangular - with a hole in the middle. I would start with a tight roll for surface tension, then flatten and shape.
Any experienced bagel makers here want to hazard a guess the likely result? I suppose I could make 7 regular and one square as a test, bjt if it's likely to work I'd love to do all 8 that way.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Frallor are a small single-serving bread typically eaten as a breakfast sandwich here in Sweden. They have become a part of my bread rotation because they are easy to make as an everyday loaf. After I moved to Sweden, I had bought Martin Johansson's Bröd, Bröd, Bröd book and he has a number of variations on frallor. I'm not the best at following directions and often add my own influences to breads which has been fun to combine with the base frallor recipe since it is easy to adjust in a variety of ways. The photo above was from my most recent batch of frallor. The rough base I follow is:
Mix until incorporated. Let stand for 8-10 hours, Shape by folding the dough into an envelope twice and then cutting into 9 parts. This usually results in more square like frallor than the one pictured above. Let rise for an hour, heat the oven to 250 degrees celsius and bake for 15-20minutes.
I like to use Dinkel / spelt wheat as part of my frallor when I mix in cheese. This variant was:
I tend to make these before I leave for work, leave them out in our warm apartment, and then bake them in the evening.
I baked Maurizio’s sourdough Pain de Mie today.
Based on his recipe and recommendations I made a 700 g dough to fit in my 8.5” x 4.5” loaf pan, however, it came out rather small, I’d say it could easily have been 800 go for that size.
Anyhow, as per his recipe it is all white flour, 12% butter unsalted, 7% honey, 22% milk, 48% water, and 2% salt.
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/pain-de-
See what I mean, it is rather short and squat for sandwich bread.
How much dough do you guys use for this size of pan? What it underproofed or just not enough dough?
I’ll post photos of the crumb tomorrow once I cut it open.
Benny
HI, everyone,
I'm really enjoying browsing around on this site! Been baking, off and on, for about 50 years. A bit more frequently now that I'm retired from my day job :) I'm known for my Irish Soda breads (and variations thereon), various rye breads, honey-egg bread, and a few others. My current experiment (having its first rise as I type) is an orange/cardamom/fennel/anise rye that I'm attempting to convert from a standard loaf-pan version to boule in a dutch oven. If this works I'll post pics (maybe even if it doesn't, and the results are amusing ;) ).
Cheers,
JcP
There are many reasons why I want to make a bread machine work in my life. I've baked bread the long way and I love to do that. But my spine no longer wants me to stand up straight, and I get winded just walking the length of my house. Kneading is fun and I love it, but it hurts now. Bending over is a roulette of dizzy spells. So having something on my counter that requires no reaching for parchment paper and pans, no preheating of oven and bending over to load/unload it, no kneading, etc... that's helpful right now. When/If I recover, I'll go back to something more active.
There's another reason. People with Celiac disease already have enough issues with food. Why make them go through the ritual of baking the long way when a machine could actually fulfill the duty with only a small loss of quality? Gluten free bread is around $8 a loaf right now, near me. It can be as much as $11 if it's an "artisan" loaf. I've paid $15 for a local baker's truly wonderful loaf of gluten free bread. I don't begrudge anyone the profits, but I can't do that forever. Hardly anyone can.
And there's another reason still. As people get older, the chances of latent Celiac genes becoming active increases. In the US, 1 in 133 people has Celiac already active. But that says nothing about how many people have the genetics. And because it's one of those things that activates, the elderly are the largest group of people with Celiac. The elderly have the greatest need for gluten free, yet they can least afford it. And the difference between baking bread the long way and using a bread machine could make the difference for someone.
And another reason: Not everyone tolerates xanthan gum. But if you eat gluten free, it's hard to avoid it. Only by baking for yourself can you fully avoid it.
So having a decent bread machine is important to a certain group of people. That's why I'm dedicated to finding a way to get along with a bread machine, even though it does things like you see in the image above. I literally couldn't find any advice for that sort of problem anywhere. I puzzled it out by watching youtube videos until I saw someone do what I did and realized why that crater had formed. But it should never have formed at all.
I think people deserve better equipment than this. I ended up kneading that dough by hand and that's the whole purpose of having a bread machine in the first place. I don't expect artisan results, but I do expect that I can at least avoid the kneading part if I buy an appliance designed to do that. And maybe it's a pipe dream, but I also expect a decent manual that tells you the timings of the kneading and rise portions of each cycle, so you can plan what you want to use.
The full blog entry is here: https://www.nixgluten.com/2019/11/the-great-gluten-free-bread-machine.html
Youtuber Steve Gamelin was the first artisan bread instructor that I stumbled upon. Prior to discovering him, I was just a bread-machine guy. I liked his videos so much that I bought one of his Kindle books, just to send some money his way. He got me into long-ferment baking, and that got me here.
His formulas are pretty forgiving, they don't have to be exact, so he does volumetric-only measuring. His method uses an overnight bulk ferment, and a 90 minute proof.
http://www.youtube.com/user/artisanbreadwithstev - - - no final "e"
I've made a few dozen of his loaves with near 100% whole wheat flour. First, follow his recipes closely, and you'll learn how the high hydration feels, before you substitute in more whole wheat flour like I did, which needs extra water.
He uses commercial yeast only, no sourdough. But with an overnight rise, all you need is 1/4 tsp per loaf.
No starter, no biga, no poolish, no barm. No weighing. No kneading. No stretch-and-folds.
He has mainly 100% white flour recipes, and then some 50-50 whole wheat/white flour recipes.
He has two broad cateories, 1) the 8-16 hour rises, and 2) the "turbo" process.
The 8-16 hour rises are more open crumb, I think, than the speeded up process. The longer rise loaves taste better, imho.
Watch a few of his videos. His mixing method is so easy, it's much easier to clean up than a bread machine's mixing paddle and pan.
Granted, it's not the kind of "Instagram-worthy" open crumb and big oven spring that you can learn here on this web site. But if you are looking for K.I.S.S., I have not found anything simpler than Steve's method for basic "good enough" bread.
Here is my favorite recipe from his channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcmS7uahscI
it's a 50-50 white/whole wheat. Enjoy.
This loaf came up in another discussion and DanAyo asked me to post details of the process and the recipe, something I'm glad to do with a few caveats. First, this loaf is made entirely with home milled flours meaning that your mileage may vary depending on your milling technique and the grain you're using. My starter is made with home milled rye and is maintained on my baking schedule so its vigor and flavor may be different from your results. Finally, the times for bulk ferment and proof as well as baking reflect the temperature in my kitchen and the performance of my oven. Therefore if it doesn't work to your satisfaction you've got plenty of reasons to blame it on me.
I am using a 1998 KA Heavy Duty mixer with a Mockmill attachment. The loaf is baked in a USA Pan Small Pullman pan and lid that measures 4"x4"x9". The oven is a full size electric.
My starter is made with freshly milled rye at 100% hydration, weighs about 200g and is kept in the fridge around 34 - 36f. My flour is unbolted, freshly ground hard wheat, either white or red. The recipe seems to work well with either. The pictured loaf is hard red.
On baking day the starter is taken out of the fridge and given a couple of hours to come up to room temp. I put 150g of it in the mixing bowl of my KA mixer, mill 75g of rye into the starter jar and add 75g of water, stir thoroughly and set it on the counter to double in about 4 hours. When it's done that it goes back into the fridge.
The 'discard' from the starter is in the mixing bowl (that's what makes the loaf parsimonious). I mill 25g of rye onto it and 400g of wheat. I add 1/4tsp of Ascorbic acid and use the paddle to mix in 275g of warmed, filtered water and 30g of sorghum molasses. Once everything is mixed I cover the bowl and let the mixture rest for 45 minutes.
I then use the hook to begin kneading the dough. This kneading lasts around 10 minutes. Close to the end of the initial kneading I add in 1/4tsp of Instant Dry Yeast. After I feel the gluten is beginning to be well developed I pull the ball of dough off the hook, sprinkle 9g of Pink Himalayan Salt on top of it and cover the bowl for a 10 minute rest.
At the end of that rest period I begin kneading again for at least 5 minutes. Toward the end of the second kneading I add 20g of ghee and continue kneading until it's well integrated. At that point I remove the bowl, shape the dough into a ball, cover the bowl and set it in a warm, draft free location.
The bulk ferment will last 2-3 hours depending on kitchen temp. The dough is then shaped and placed in the Pullman pan and covered with plastic wrap for final proof, another 2 hours or so.
When the highest point of the dough is even with the lip of the pan I place the lid on the pan and set it on the middle rack of a cold oven. With the temperature set for 350f I bake it from the cold start for about 33 minutes. The lid is then removed and the bake continued for another 11 minutes before the loaf is removed from the pan and cooled on a rack.
The loaf is not cut until the following day. The flavor isn't particularly sour but there's little or no hint of the small amount of yeast that's added after the starter has had about an hour's head start to work on the flours.
Here's the recipe:
150g of 100% rye starter
25g of fresh milled rye
400g of fresh milled hard wheat (red or white)
275g filtered, warmed water
1/4 tsp Ascorbic Acid (optional)
30g Sorghum molasses or honey
9g of PH salt
20g of ghee
Something for a Halloween dinner. Another sourdough loaf tied with string and baked in a Dutch oven. Use an almond or pecan for the stem. Serve it with eyeball soup (tomato soup with mini bocconcini combined with stuffed green olives). An olive and rosemary roach as garnish.
Bread recipe here: https://zestysouthindiankitchen.com/pumpkin-sourdough-bread/
If I have a straight brioche recipe, how would I change it to incorporate a stiff levain ?
