I've always made the bread in our house, but now husband wants to take over, which is good!
But our results are so different. Using identical recipes (brioche type or wholemeal) mine is well risen and light and fluffy inside, his rises at first then stops, turns out solid, hard. Good taste.
We have a dough mixing machine, the rest by hand.
He tends to bash the dough about a lot more than I do, seems to knock the life out of it - is this possible?
Before the bulk rise, bash all you want. During the degasing. gentle is the key. In shaping the loaf, stretch the surface. If the stretch is difficult without tearing let the dough rest for about ten minutes before stretching.
Ford
New bakers are generally less patient. I suspect part of the problem may be in the mixing. Dough needs to be mixed or kneaded to "windowpane". Txfarmer has a wonderful post with pics on that. Enter "windowpane,Txfarmer" in the search box.
As Ford said, bashingthe dough about BEFORE the bulk rise is great. Julia Child hadan episode where she cranked the dough over her shoulder and bashe it into the table like she was chopping oak firewood. BAM!
New bakers also tend tolet the bread rise either till it almost falls (over) in which case the yeast loses all ability to raise any more OR they raise to exactly what the recipe time calls for-which isusually not what your dough needs. Search Box- "fingerpoke test". It will be illuminating.
Bake deliciously!
I thought that might be the reason, he does all this heavy handling after taking the dough out of the kneading machine.
Now to tactfully pass on the info without putting him off.