Hey everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone else used the "Vitamin C Method" that I use for all my pizzas.  The ascorbic acid of the Vitamin C creates a reaction with the yeast that speeds up the rising process dramatically, cutting it down to only one short rise. 

Just curious.

joel

Is there are simple explanation for the reason why a bread will not rise very much (final prove). The bread doubled during first prove, once I put it in the tins, it rose only slightly and there was no oven spring. The bread was quite heavy and dense. Tastes OK, but not as light and fluffy as I have made in the past (using all white plain flour eg lesson 1 loaf on this site)

I did experiment this time using 350g white flour, 150g wholemeal flour, 50g linseed, 50g sunflower seeds, 50g rolled oats, salt, 7g instant yeast, 330ml water. I'd like to know what went wrong so I learn from my mistakes.

I'd be grateful for any advice. Thanks Chris

Fruit flies hover around and even dare to land on my rising dough and my cooling bread. Yelling at them and threatening them with my rolling pin has not scared them away. Is there some sort of netting that would keep them off or other solution?

I've been operating for several months under the assumption that the higher the protein level in the flour, the better the bread I make would be. I guess I can blame Daniel Leader for this a little bit. But in the past few weeks, I've finally started noticing all the recipes on TFL that call for AP flour, and when I saw Anis Bouabsa's baguette recipe I realized my assumption must be wrong. What I need help understanding is when to use high-gluten flour and when to use AP. I thought that higher gluten levels meant more elasticity, more strength, and a better rise. But if the best baguettes in Paris use AP, I have to be wrong. Right? Help me, please. I'm hopelessly confused.

Hi, 

I am trying to back Portuguese Sweet Bread. I don't believe I kneaded it as long as I should have and now my dough is taking forever to rise. It's been set aside to rise for about 4 hours now. 

Can I take the dough and start kneading it again after it's been sitting for hours? 

I usually never pass the windowpane test with other doughs - but get close enough. This time around it seems like I should have waited until the kneading process was complete. I just want to know if I can start kneading again. 

Thanks!

Greetings -

After a couple of years' hiatus, it appears that I'm (getting) back on the sourdough treadmill.
(The sourdough starter in question is my home-grown, Brookline-based starter.)

Today's loaf is shown below (behind the remnants of last week's undercooked (but wonderful toasted) loaf):

After filling the pan about half full, I got (I think) a reasonable (single) rise,
which took 3-4 hours (which took it to the top of the pan), and another inch
or so with the oven spring (a 500 degree F oven, reduced immediately to 400,
for 35-40 minutes):

Here's the crumb:

It tastes delicious.

My question - should I be trying a second rise?  My experience has been that the dough
starts to get awfully 'fragile' after 3 hours, starting to disintegrate.  I'm wondering --
if I flipped it halfway through, might I get more uniform crumb? (One can see from the
image above that the top half of the loaf is 'airier' than the bottom half).

Or is that more trouble than it's worth?

And any thoughts on how might I avoid that dip in the middle at the sides of the loaf?

Insight welcome.

Thanks,

 - Richard

I bought a Food Network bread machine and the bread is not coming out right. I have searched for a way to contact some form of support, but they don't seem to offer it.

My bread machine basic setting defaults to 3 hours, which seems to me to be too short.

Even using recipe from the manual, and also using other bread machine recipes, the bread does not rise properly and a 2 lb loaf comes out about the size of a 1 lb loaf, and too dense. I have tried 5 loaves and only one of them came out sort of OK.

Any advice or pointers to where I should look for info?

Thanks much

Hi,

This weekend I decided to try some AB&P Brioche. I have made Brioche from Tartine before, and assumed this would be fairly easy, as it appeared to be less labour intensive. So I mixed the dough last night, put it in the fridge and shaped around 11 o'clock this morning. The only problem is, they have risen just barely or not at all. I am making 1 loaf in a standard size pan with 2 lb. of dough. Should I let this keep rising? Criticism is accepted!

Thanks!

hello, i'm new to these parts and new to bread baking... i'm looking for a bit of help

i made the recipe located here: http://busycooks.about.com/od/yeastbreads/r/honeywheatbr.htm

i made half of the recipe, since i only have one loaf pan.

the first time i made it, it was great. last night, i realized i was running out of time, so after i mixed everything, i put the dough in the fridge to retard the rise. this morning, i took out the dough and let it come to room temp and put it in the oven (turned off) for it to rise again. i then formed the loaf and lightly brushed the loaf with olive oil to top it with a little ground flax seed. when i brushed it, it deflated a bit, but i was sure it would come back by the time it was ready for the oven. well, nothing

i baked it, and it didn't give me an oven spring :(

what did i do wrong?

thanks in advance for any help

Here is a problem I can't figure out  - can anyone help?  I've made two attempts at making the Danish Sourdough Rye from the book Bread Alone.  In short, it uses a rye starter, but white flour for the main dough.  The book cautions that the dough will be sticky but warns against adding too much flour during kneading.

My results taste great - very earthy and tangy, with a bubbly and irregular crumb.  The problem is that the dough has so little body that I can't get it to form a loaf properly.  I've tried both a boule and torpedo shape, and each time the loaf just oozes flat during proofing.  In the oven, I get great spring as I've got terra cotta tiles to bake on, but the spring goes only horizontilally -  I can't get the loaves to spring upwards.  The resulting loaves are then either disks or flatt paddle-shaped things.

Any thoughts?  Could my dough be still too wet?   Maybe I'm not kneading enough?  The only organic flour I can get in large quanities here is all-purpose.  Might it not have enough gluten?