The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Dough Consistency experiment

uziel's picture
uziel

Dough Consistency experiment

Hello, I am trying making a regular bread loaf, I just use flour, salt, water and fresh yeast. Just to test, some times, I make the dough like cake batter, runny and thick like honey, rest process is same, I use hand blender to blend the batter for 5-6 minutes, the rise is good and the bread that I get is very soft  and good to eat. But technically, I am getting confused, if I can get bread from batter too, why to knead so much? (coz I have finger arthritis so was looking for some easy way around) I have read somewhere in this forum, too much moisture in dough is not good and we cannot get any result from it, The only problem I faced is obviously I cant shape it so the top is auto shaped after rise. Please guide

clazar123's picture
clazar123

I understand your question but I'm not sure I know the answer either except it to be a social evolutionary step. I'm speaking from a USA perspective.  For a long time people made their own bread out of necessity. Then more commercial bread (store bought) became available and people loved the soft,squishy bread that was cheap and always fresh. Homemade bread, besides being a sign of being too poor to buy your bread, was often stale as it was made once a week on baking day. It was a chore to fire up the oven for bread so that was another reason it was done periodically rather than daily. Fresh,soft bread was desirable in the staple of bread.

Batter breads have been around a long time and are easy to mix up in a suitable container and especially with a mixer. I re-discovered them when I had hand problems and couldn't knead-the mixer was my friend! I converted my daily bread and Breakfast Bread recipe just by adding more liquids. But batter bread, while being easier to mix, has a few characteristics that make it less popular than kneaded bread, at least in my opinion after going through my experience.. I believe these loaves stale faster and may also not be quite as tasty with fermentation flavors as kneaded bread. Wetter breads usually have a shorter fermentation time-at least mine did. Also, a batter bread always needs a pan and so does not lend itself to other forms. With kneaded bread,on baking day, one large batch of dough would have made numerous forms of bread to consume-rolls,cakes,loaves,sticks,etc

So batter bread definitely has a place in my repertoire of breads and I believe it is underutilized in the bread community. I would like to see it talked about more and was glad to see your post. Have fun and share your recipes and experiences. I would love to hear about it.