New and experimenting without salt
Hi,
My name is Chantal, and I'm very, very new at this. Baked my first loaf (and threw it out), and my second (half edible), about 2 months ago. I have to specify that I don't (or didn't) cook in any way, I'm really, really bad at it.
Since then I must have baked 35-40 loaves, using the same 4-5 recipes in order to improve... read a lot, and can now consistently produce really good white sandwich bread, a decent basic crusty loaf, bagels and pizza dough... I am HOOKED on this wonderful thing that is making dough!!!
My ultimate goal is to make our bread healthier (my husband has high blood pressure).
I started experimenting with cutting salt, but may as well say cut the taste ?. So I found this forum and I'm hoping to get ideas/tricks, and possibly share my humble discoveries, should there be some!
My first hope is to use lemon zest/juice as a substitute. Tried today with RealLemon only... dough rose ok but very bland taste! Zest/juice next... I more then welcome (I pretty much need) any ideas and advice!
My main "thing" for healthy whole wheat is to use "white whole wheat" flour. it's made from white wheat berries as opposed to red wheat berries.
Common sources for it are: King Arthur brand, Kroger brand, Trader Joe brand, and Wheat Montana Prairie Gold (available at most Super Walmarts).
maybe the only real difference is color and taste, but it seems to be lighter and less dense too. but by being lighter in color, people don't *think* of it as whole wheat when they eat it. So, you can get by with maybe 75% of it as whole wheat, and only using 25% refined white bread flour.
My favorite loaf now is 90% whole wheat, and 10% AP or bread flour. And I almost always now use home-milled hard white spring wheat, and some Kamut Khorasan (yellow) wheat, and some red wheat.
Welcome to the club!
Thank you for sharing that! Being very novice at bread making, I haven't dared any flour except commercial bread flour.
It is a bit daunting... but I'm working my way through some recipe's in Peter Reinhart's BBA, and was next going to buy his book on Whole Wheat breads to learn the intricacies of this type of flour... then make my way from there. ?
Tuscan bread does not have salt, you can try this formula. Or you could use any formula and reduce the salt to find an amount that suites you.
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/tuscan-bread-pane-toscano-recipe
Interesting, thank you!
What do bread bakers generally think of Morton Lite Salt, that replaces half the Sodium Chloride (regular salt) with Potassium Chloride?
I use Morton Lite Salt in my home-made sports drink. It has a better ratio of sodium and potassium than Gatorade, closely matching a commercial sports drink called "Vitalyte", formerly known as ERG or "Gookinade". (Gookin was the name of the inventor.) But my Lite Salt DIY drink tastes bad without flavoring.
We did buy potassium salt as table salt when we first decided to lower our salt intake... I'll have to research that, thanks for the suggestion!
I have salt down to 1.4% and half of that is Morton's Lite. I find anything more than half Lite tastes metallic.
Good to know! We've used potassium salt here as table salt, I might try that!... I'm very excited about that idea!! It might be possible to lower even more, by compensating with lemon zest/juice... ?
Now I just want to run off and try it, even though I spent the day baking breads and pizza dough!?
But tomorrow's Monday which means no time for bread making until next weekend for me!
I get the feeling I'll love this forum! Already received some top notch tips and ideas!!