January 7, 2015 - 7:17am
New to this
Hello all. I recently retired and have decided to pursue the art of bread making. I like the idea of grinding my own grain and purchased (not yet received) a Country Living Grain Mill. I also got the book “The Bread Maker’s Apprentice” from my wife for Christmas. My kitchen is small without much counter space but we will begin construction this Spring of an addition that will include a new kitchen with an island! I currently have a Kitchenaid mixer and will install a new (slightly used) Wolf Steam oven in the new kitchen. I am also researching other tools/utensils to find the best value for this new hobby of mine. I look forward to belonging to this group of bread makers and getting all my questions answered.
John
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The thing that has been by far the most useful / helpful so far is my dutch oven. It let me produce some nice bread right away, before I learned anything, when all I knew was how to follow a basic no-knead recipe.
Hi John, and welcome to TFL. Sounds like you are in for a lot of fun!
The Country Living mill is excellent and grinds beautifully. We have one, and it has done a fantastic job. However, if you plan to mill a lot of flour with the mill, you might want to look into "motorizing" it with an old exercycle and a long belt (i.e this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW6qgzfe1gs). Unless you would like milling to develop upper body strength as well (not a bad thing), the constant crank turning can sometimes get wearisome (and boring).
A bench scraper/dough divider is extremely handy, as well as a blend of 1/3 liquid lecithin to 2/3 vegetable oil for greasing pans (if you use pans). Amazing stuff! But you may already know/have all of this.
The oven sounds terrific...something a lot of folks would like to have. And congratulations on your soon kitchen expansion. What a neat opportunity to incorporate features (like the oven) that will lend themselves to better baking.
I'm sure others (hopefully more experienced than I) will come up with many more helpful ideas and welcomes. :)
As a beginner you're in an enviable position, one which I wish I'd had 40 years ago when I started out. You can teach yourself bread baking using a graded and organized approach written by an expert. To do this you have available textbooks, not recipe books with some pages devoted to teaching. A textbook is all about helping the student develop his knowledge base from the ground up. I had no such textbook available to me when I started out. I now think about all the things I could have learned from a text. That's not to say that these past 40 years haven't been fun; they have been. But I truly believe I'd have gotten to where I am now 30 years ago had I but worked my way through a text book.
So, I suggest that you pick a textbook and devote a year to working through it. Here are two different ones you could consider: DiMuzio's Bread Baking and Hamelman's Bread. Both may be in your library system. Both are often available used online from Powell's or Alibris.
RK (if you don't mind the abbreviation)
You make a very good point.
The times 'they are a' changin'. So much more info available in so many different manners. It truly is revolutionary and this forum is a large part of that.
What constantly amazes me is to think that you can go to this school with the only tuition being a few dollars worth of flour and such in a week; to experiment with to your heart's content.
Good luck to you.
dobie
I’ve only made bread from kits for the bread machine or frozen dough purchased from the store. Right now I am letting my first homemade dough rise. I used the simple recipe under the lessons in this forum. I should be placing it into the oven in about an hour. I do have one question with this simple recipe. When you punch the dough down after the first rise do you just knead it again for 10 minutes like the first time?
Pushing down once or twice to release the gasses will be sufficient. When the bread machine does it, it gives a few turns to the paddle...then it's on to another rise. If you kneaded well the first time, the gluten should be sufficiently developed already. :)
Okay, maybe I worked it a little too much, but it is rising again and will go in the oven in a couple of minutes....just in time for dinner!
I too, am new here. While my retirement is not for 2 years, I am jumping in early and will try to bake whenever I have a few hours, probably only once a month until vacation.
This is a great site!
Kringle - How's the Wolf Steam Oven coming along? What settings are you using for bread?
We love the oven but I haven’t learned how to use it for bread making yet, but I did try the gourmet mode for bread (a11 think). It thought my bread was done long before it thought it should be done. It is a convection oven and I don’t think there is a way to turn the fan off. I’m told a fan will dry off the top of the loaf too quickly.
Hi kringle! I too took up bread baking as a 'retirement' option (hence the handle), and I love it. I have a neighbourhood micro-bakery with a mailing list of customers and a little bread shop in my garage with Saturday hours. I'm so happy to have found the Fresh Loaf group - what a great bunch of bakers! So much to learn...
One of my essentials is the two big slabs of granite (off-cuts from 1.25 inch granite counter tops) that turned my electric wall oven into a sort of 'deck' oven. It works great. I also bought a bunch of wicker baskets from a shop in Chinatown that cost me under $2 each. They work great for proofing bread, even fairly wet doughs. Sometimes I line them with old cloth napkins and sometimes I just flour them directly. They are also a lot cheaper than bannetons. :)
Hope the first bread turned out good... :)
LL
Just a heads up, there's been a fair amount of chatter lately about food safety issues with less expensive baskets, particularly from China.
I don't own a proper banneton or even a wicker basket suitable to the task, so please know I only speak from ignorance.
But it might be worthwhile to check out those discussions, tho I don't know for sure. Just a mention.
The granite decks sound world class.
dobie
Thanks dobie, maybe i'll stick with lining the baskets with clean floured napkins. :o
LL
You know, I don't know, but it sounds safe for now.
dobie