Healthy Bread in 5 Min - Chewy?
I just purchased the book by Jeff and Zoe and love the ease in which to make bread. I would highly recommend it for those that don't have a lot of time for baking or that just need a quick way to make bread, definitely a book with great explanantions and healthy information.
There are two things though with the Master Recipe:
(1) With the omission of honey and oil, it seems to lack the flavor of PR's Whole Grain book. But again, PR's bread can be somewhat time consuming and with the ease of "5 minutes" it is extremely inviting to bake more often so I understand the trade off.
(2) My bread is turning out very chewy. The holes in the 3 day old ferment are nice and the oven spring is good. I have also measured the temp to make sure oven is accurate but I am still getting very chewy bread.
It's probably something I'm doing; I just don't know what. Thanks for your suggestions.
When the dough is cold and the loaves large it takes a long time to bake them through. I suggest either making smaller loaves or baking them longer than instructed (or both). When I've done that I've gotten good results from their method, but when I make a standard sized boule it tends to come out underbaked.
Good luck!
Lean breads, that don't have much but flour, water, salt, and yeast tend to be relatively chewy. Most other things tend to soften them up some. Especially fats and oils. Then milk and eggs. Maybe even sweeteners.
Also, maybe try some flours that may be lower in protein, if that is possible for whole grain fours. Maybe some that are not so finely ground where they may not develop as much gluten as others.
One last thing: If the recipes include added vital wheat gluten, try cutting it back some, to see if you get a texture more to your liking.
The recipes in that book simply don't work (sorry if anyone is friends with these folks; I bet they're very nice). After baking about 4 loaves from it, all with nasty gummy crumb I gave up. This is rather unlike me but I got sick of throwing away good flour.
Subsequently I did a bunch of research and bought Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread and all of my breads have turned out beautifully. I'm onto making sourdough, which is really all that Jeff and Zoe are doing BTW. Invest in Bread, give yourself some time to actually learn how to fold, shape, and knead, and prepare yourself to be validated.
-Arlene
I think the book mentioned has only been in release a month or so.
Confused?
The technique used is basically the same as in their previous book, which has been out for two years now. And regardless of whose book you use, cold dough in a large mass is difficult to bake through.
Hamelman's book and Healthy Bread in 5 are totally different beasts. Hamelman writes for the semi-professional or professional baker; Jeff and Zoe are speaking to the extremely amateur home baker. Advising "Hamelman" as the solution here seems sort of like advising a 10 year to use calculus on their homework assignment to get more accurate numbers. Yeah, OK, I guess that'd take care of it, but it probably isn't the kind of "help" the questioner was looking for.
I have baked quite a few loaves of Bread in 5 minutes and thus far have only had a gummy loaf the first time. All the rest have come out just fine. No gumminess at all. I think maybe you should take alook at what you might be doing to make them gummy instead of putting the whole blame on them. What have you made and what did you do when you made them. That is a start. Apparently a whole slew of people are not getting gummy bread so the fault Dear Brutus is not in out stars but in ourselves..
I've been baking bread for decades, for me the recipes don't work. I made a dozen loaves, carefully making sure everything is done properly and all I get are gummy, deflated loaves even with the internal temp of 205. Very frustrating. I'm going back to my old recipes. I've read posts saying this book has brought people to bread baking but I think a lot of people also have gotten turned off by trying to bake bread following their recipes and not having success.
Thank you for the suggestions.
I can do a coarser grind and less vital wheat gluten. I am hoping to not use it at all but I wanted to see how it was supposed to turn out before I adjusted it.
And I can also bake longer. I have measured the temp to be 190 degrees when done. Does it need to be higher than that for whole wheat?
I know the technique is one I want to continue using and have a couple of "bread machine" friends that are also intriqued with the idea of "5 minutes" a day because that's all they have. :)
Thank you again.
If you were using VWG, cutting back or eliminating it may well be the only change you need to make to reduce the "too chewy" issue. Probably should substitute eqaul amount of extra flour for the vwg, to keep hydration consistent.
Re: gummy bread. I have found a big difference between 190F and 205F internal. Also, be sure to cool the bread for 1 hour before slicing.
I take the bread out of the oven and tip it out... then quickly measure with an instant thermometer... poking into the center from the bottom of the loaf. If the temp is only 190F, I put it back into the cloche for another 2 - 3 min...
Also, my cloches have me rather spoiled. I use nothing else, anymore. I also use the cloches for nothing else but bread baking... and don't have to worry about the cloche breaking.
Put the cloch into a cold oven, and heat to 500F. Drop the [32 oz] dough into the hot cloche, score, put the top on and into the oven. I drop the temp immediately to 425F for 14 minutes...
Then, remove the top -- make sure the dough is lightly tanned. Drop the temp to 390F and continue to bake another 14 min... then check temp.
Let the bread cool for up to an hour before slicing. The bread continues to "bake" during the "cooling down" process.
Good luck!
~ Broc
google: sassafras
google: la cloche
Both manufacturers make loaf-shaped and round cloches. I also use my cloches in charcoal-fired ceramic cookers, such as Big Green Egg.
I have a glass bowl and dish that looks like your cloche. Could I use that? I know glass is not a good conductor of heat though; would that hurt the baking?
Glass, metal, ceramic, terracotta, etc; doesn't matter. As long as it is oven proof, and I mean high temp oven proof. Most of the time, thorough preheating of the "cloche" is called for.
Corning, pyrex glass bowls, casseroles, are often mentioned as suitable devices for baking breads.
I have used cast iron dutch ovens, enamelled dutch ovens... [careful of the handles on the top... some are not good past 400F.
But I have settled on the stoneware cloches, as I get best results with them.
I have a silverware tray that I line with parchment paper that I use to proof with. When the time come to transfer the dough to the loaf-shaped cloches, I simply lift with the parchment paper, and put the paper and dough into the heated cloche. Easey-peasey.
When baking round loaves, I use enamelled dutch ovens... and just plop the dough into the heated DO. Again, easey-peasey. Don't worry about the dough sticking to the cloches or dutch ovens. Use no spray, oils, flour, yada-yada...
Have faith, Grasshopper. Trust the Force! May Eru be with you! The dough won't stick!
~ Best!
~ Broc
I always shiver when someone mentions dumping a lump of cool dough onto a preheated glas/pyrex dish. The temperature differential can make the SHATTER into a million pieces. I haven't seen it happen with bread but with other things.
They are designed to heat in the oven and can tolerate very high temps but glass/pyrex cannot tolerate almost any significant temperature differential.So dumping a large lump of 80F dough into a glass vessel heated to 450F can be a recipe for disaster.
I don't bake bread with pyrex -- so you very well be right about shattering!
I use anamelled metal and stoneware only... never had problems with either.
~ Best!
~ Broc
Believe it or not, Pyrex is made for cooking. Original NYT No Knead Bread article and recipe:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?ex=1320642000&en=d5976d62a4577548&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
"...4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats..."
Well, I tried the recipe in Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day on page 92, Soft Wheat Sandwich Bread, and it was delicious. The additions of egg, honey, and oil made a huge difference in taste and texture.
Albeit, a different bread type than the master formula, this is a very nice bread with an almost flaky crust. I would definitely recommend this for an everyday bread with an easy method of preparation.
It calls for 5 cups whole wheat and 2 1/2 cups all purpose but I just used all whole wheat and it still turned out great (I did weigh it according to chart and did not use volume measures). It probably lacked a little rise with all whole wheat but that's okay because the crumb was nice and light anyway.
As always, thank you for the help.