August 5, 2015 - 11:29pm
Should these sweet fruit bread techniques result in a high-quality plain bread?
My plain bread never turns out well, but my milk-dried fruit bread's nice: soft and a dense fluffiness inside, nice dark colouring on the crust. I'm wondering, if I omit the fancy ingredients of fruit bread but use the same technique, should I still end up with a soft delicious white bread? Any other suggestions in case I waste my time and ingredients?
Basically I'll stir 270 ml water + 2 teaspoons instant yeast into 500 ml plain flour (rather than 250 ml milk, 20 ml orange juice, 1 egg and bread flour).
Knead, oil, and rise about 90 minutes.
Divide in 3 (omit dried fruit). Braid together and form a circle. Rise about 45 minutes.
Glaze with oil (rather than egg). Bake at 220 degrees Centigrade for about 20 minutes.
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but apart from that, it's a reasonable basic bread recipe... (I'd also use weights rather than volume too - 500g flour, 320g water, 9g yeast, 5g salt)
The orange juice in the fruit loaf will be adding a little vitamin C, aka. "flour improver". It will help the gluten work a little better. You probably need to bake a lot longer too - 30 minutes or more, however it will depend on the loaf shape. I'd start with a simple boulle if not using a tin.
-Gordon