June 4, 2018 - 6:02am
Construction bread
Construction bread because all the bread I have baked so far (five loaves) have all turned out to be bread bricks that could probably be used in construction (smile).
It is very discouraging, I watch the videos, follow the instructions and recipes diligently, the bread rises nicely then while baking, the 'rise' goes away and the loaf deflates and shrinks. The bread tastes good but the crumb is not light and fluffy and the size nothing like a sandwich size.
I don't know what I am doing wrong. Any thoughts?
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And during the bake it collapses then that is a sure sign you're over proofing.
A recipe and method would help with further guidance.
I admit that I do not fully understand proofing - I thought that the more proofing the better... that is, the light and fluffier the bread will be. Here is the recipe and method I used. This was for English Muffin bread.
Yield: 2 Loaves
5 cups All-Purpose Flour
2 pkgs Dry Active Yeast
2 Tbsp Sugar
1 ½ tsp Salt
2 cups warm Milk
½ cup Warm Water
¼ tsp baking soda
• mix water/milk, add yeast in a large bowl.
• Combine all dry ingredients in separate bowl
• wait 10 minutes, add half of the dry ingeedients
• mix dough
• Mix together for a few minutes.
• Add in the rest of the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Do not overmix.
• Cover and let dough double in size.
• Punch down
• Grease 2 loaf pans.
• Divide the dough into the pans and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size.
• Bake at 375 for 35 to 40 minutes.
Your instructions say, do not over mix. I’m wondering if you are mixing the dough enough. Well mixed dough develops gluten. And gluten is necessary to contain the gasses that raise the loaf.
If you are not sure about the gluten development search for “windowpane” on the forum.
Also I read your recipe calls for 5 cups of flour and 2.5 cups of liquid. I think this will make an extremely wet dough. I’m used to working with weights so, I’m guessing here but I think I’m correct. Generally a cup of liquid (water or milk) will weigh twice as much as a cup of flour. If this is so your dough is mixed at 100% hydration. That is too wet. Are you sure you wrote the recipe correctly?
Dan
I wrote the recipe that I used although I sort of put that recipe together based on reading other recipes and I liked the idea of using milk. I don't believe I copied it directly from any source but, rather, from multiple sources that yielded one, two, and four loaves. Of course, I mathematically adjusted ingredients to achieve two loaves.
The big difference is that none of those recipes called for proofing twice. They all indicated a wet dough that goes into the bread pans then doubles in size. I added the extra proofing step (in the bowl) because I thought it would provide a lighter and fluffier crumb.
I am not familiar with the type of bread you are baking. I recommend you start with a known good recipe and follow it as closely as possible. Bread baking is not rocket science, but it does require a degree of precision. Small things can make a big difference, either for good or bad. Learn from a proven recipe and once you become confident with it, you can experiment and tweak the bread.
For instance; the amount of water in a given dough is measured as percentage of hydration. 65% hydration dough is very easy to work with because it is not too wet to handle. But if you take that same dough (typical loaf size) and add 2 tablespoons of additional water to it, it becomes 71% hydrated. Just 2 extra tablespoons of water will change the dough from easily handled to a discernibly wetter feeling dough. Little changes can have a big affect on your dough. So try your best to follow a known good recipe as closely as you can.
Post your findings and experiences. We’re all here to help in any way we can.
Dan
Dan, when I titled the original post 'Construction Bread' that was meant to be cute turn of phrase to indicate that my bread was coming out of the oven like bricks that could be used for building... hence 'construction'.
I was actually trying to make a couple loaves of English Muffin bread.
Very wet. And that's a lot of yeast. Isn't there around 7g in one packet of dried yeast. At around 600g of flour I'd think one packet would be a good amount but 14g?
1 tsp of salt = 5.69g
1.5 = 8.5g
That's around 1.4%
Normal range would be 1.8-2% = 10.8g - 12g
Now bearing in mind the salt is low, the hydration very high and the yeast is high there's too much going on here that's off.
That's a lot of yeast.