How do I bake Bread like a Bakery?
My local shop has bread from some Bakery, I bought a loaf and it's the most amazing white loaf I've ever had. It's a real big loaf but it is light as anything, it feels lighter than my attempts and I weighed it at 800g but mine are 500g. It has the most amazing crust, it's somehow chewy but crispy and yet not hard or thick, it's just got this cracked layer that looks like the ground when it gets too dry, you can pick it off too. Then the bread has the smoothest texture, it's not all uniform and perfect, but it isn't full of massive bubbles like no knead breads either. The taste is so lovely as well, usually mine just end up bland and I'm using the standard White bread recipe. The crust has this nice very dark brown to it on top like it's burnt, but it isn't and it doesn't taste burnt either. Most breads are very stiff but this one is like stretchy and chewy, but not too chewy...
http://us.123rf.com/450wm/senk/senk1109/senk110900304/10729464-bakery-bread.jpg?ver=6
It looks like that, only darker and bigger, it's not like most breads I see where it is has a crust that's dry looking like these... http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/bread-stand-bakery-food-market-34903461.jpg
Whenever I try to make bread, I use a kneading machine, I follow the instructions perfectly, I put it in the Oven and instead of raising up, it grows mostly outwards and it ends up rather flat. I can put it in a bowl and then it's fine, but I want it to be free standing so the whole crust is cooked the same, rather than having just the top cook in free air and the rest of it cooking against the bowl.
So getting it to ride on it's own without it just going flat is one problem.
The second problem is just the bland taste, I'm not sure if Fan Ovens make it taste a certain way, where Bakeries have some kind of special oven? I'm guessing they add something in for taste? I'm not sure...
The third problem I have is getting the crust like theirs, mine just ends up rather heavy, rigid, dry and then it quickly goes soft even if I don't cover it. Theirs has this crispy thinness to it that's not dry, it's chewy and it stays that way for days.
Can any one help? I want to get to the point where I can make Sandwiches for work every morning with fresh bread.
Thanx.
I'd suggest working through the "Lessons" and see how you fare. All the knowledge you are requesting is available on this site. You may, however, have to do some reading and some practical application.
buying and enjoying the wonderful shop bread is?
I would be buying and blessing the baker if I found baked bread to my liking. :)
but the cost of making a loaf at home is 1/10 the cost of similar quality store bought. 35c of materials and 15 cents of fuel costs for a 800g loaf
I call it a wash on time vrs time+gas to get to the bread store for bread....
The figures don't include labour, other ingredients, meeting regulations and continual education of the baker? What about the time put into the bread by the baker to make it exceptional? If one of us worked hard and made great loaves, would you say those loaves and their bakers don't deserve to be supported? What about your time, does it have value? I think it is a more complicated comparison.
Sure, we could all do everything ourselves but that also puts extreme limits on our activities. We each make personal choices. I'm not against choices, but I'm also into supporting good craft and good bakers.
I am not sure what you are on about, quite frankly. I don't see why it should have to be only one way or the other way, and not both.
Yes of course they deserve support, it is just that I can make better quality bread then the local bakers, with few exceptions. There are a few that create bread as good as I can, but not the same. I'd put my loaves up against any local baker here in Sacramento. You have to go to Sonoma or SF bay area to find better.
I don't know how much time it takes you to make bread, but for me it is around 5 to measure, 5 to mix, 10 in smaller increments folding and stretching, another 5 to shape and maybe 10 to actually bake it. add another 15 of my wife's time to clean up after me. Really inefficient for just 2 loaves, but what the heck? I could make 10 loaves in the same amount of time if I had a big enough oven, although shaping might take some extra time. Yes, I have timed it all, because I want to know what it will take to scale to 40 or 50 loaves and is it worth the time?
Usually done while I am also handling calls for work, some of which I don't need to pay a whole lot of attention to, but only the most heavily involved mean I can't do both at the same time. Folding and stretching is mindless.
That time gives me 2 1kg loaves, one of which we eat, and one we tend to give away. I make bread maybe every 4 or 5 days.
The good news is there is lots of non-bakers that are good at other things that will pay good money to buy things made for them.
Me? I make lots of things that are easy to make but cost quite a bit in the store, or my quality is vastly higher: Bacon, sausages, pickles, jams, tomato sauce (if I get free tomatoes)
I mean, where can you buy bacon that generates only about an ounce of bacon grease when cooking a pound of it? I barely have enough to scramble the eggs!
And let's face it, even if the economics did not make sense, hearing my son ask "Can I have some Dad bread/bacon/ribs?" as if Dad was a brand... well, worth more to me than anything else.
There is also the warm smiles and wide eyes when I show up at a neighbors house with a jar of something and/or a loaf of bread in hand. (I get some pretty damn fine midwestern pies in exchange from one, and heirloom tomatoes from another)
And there is the therapeutic side: I never get to see the fruit of my labor at work. I don't actually make anything tangible. A good honest "fruit (or bread) of my labor" result is good mental therapy.
So yes, the formulation as to why to bake bread rather than buy it is indeed complex. Money is the least of the factors.
'...hearing my son ask "Can I have some Dad bread/bacon/ribs?" as if Dad was a brand... well, worth more to me than anything else.'
Yes, you can't put a price on the deep sense of satisfaction a reaction like that brings.
I make my own jams, pickles, chutneys etc as well as my own bread and pastries - and I cook from scratch as well. Whatever I turn out is invariably better than I can buy. Most things are surprisingly easy to make, though can be time consuming, e.g cooking a chutney down, prepping fruit & veg for preserving, but it's worth the effort and the end result is rewarding. :-)
Living really rural has its advantages. I swap bread, preserves and cakes for things like free range eggs, fruit, vegetables, walnuts and, when it's in season, game (pheasant & rabbit).
Love the "Dad Brand" by the way :-)
On average about 10 pence per 100g of bread. It's not that much cheaper than buying a bog-standard own brand sliced loaf in the supermarket.The local independent bakery here is not very good, though the supermarket ISB bread is passable. I have to do a 35 mile round trip for a really good loaf of bread.
I bake bread, not because it's cheaper - because it really isn't if you're using quality ingredients - but because it tastes a hell of alot better than anything I can buy. Even my mistakes (if you discount the bricks I baked last week) are eminently edible. And, most importantly, I can bake the kind of breads that I like to eat - I'm not hostage to what the shops think I ought to be eating...
Here in Sacramento, CA, I can buy Sheperds Brand flour, the same Ken Forkish uses, for 50LBS@$18 US.
That comes out to 34Cents per pound, which is about 20 pence per half kilo, I think since doing the conversions in my head is a bit of a swag.
Salt and yeast are negligible costs.
But you can't compare it to the sponge loaf available at the supermarket, I compare it to a loaf from Grateful Bread, a pretty good local bakery only 5 miles from the house.
A similar sized 1 kg loaf is around 6 dollars.
Back to the posters original topic... =)
And with the "no knead" or Ken Forkish methods of cooking in a dutch oven you can produce bread on par with almost any commercial bakery, with relatively inexpensive equipment to replace what the "professionals" use.
Steam oven: Dutch oven.
Proofer: Shelf in the fridge, do the final proofing overnight, bake whenever is convenient to you, the yeasties are on a very slow roll at this point, nearly hibernating.
Add in a 12 quart round tub for mixing and a couple of optional proofing baskets for those cool looking stripes on the loaf and you are in business!
It's always going to be a heck of a lot cheaper when you buy in bulk, but it's just me baking bread for myself - and occasionally for other people - so a large quantity like that is simply impractical :-)
The add-ins like milled linseed, oat bran, seeds, dried fruit, olive oil, malted wheat flakes is where it gets ouchie on the pocket LOL
The equivalent of 50lbs of flour (as detailed below) last me about 3-4 months, making two loaves every ten days or so and costs me ~£44.
Shipton Mill delivers F.O.C. if you buy £30 worth of flour, so you could get 27.5 kilos of, e.g., its strong white organic flour delivered for £31.35 and it would easily remain usable for six months, which would give you about a kilo of good quality flour a week at 88p/kilo. About three quarters of the price of Waitrose Leckford estate strong white. Surely you'd use that much flour in six months?
I have sort of made a strategic plan that I am not getting more complicated than FSWY.
Make a good solid loaf and then spread whatever the heck I want on it.
That is what jam/chutney/tapenade/etc/etc is for... the bread is a blank slate for other flavors, but also tasty to eat on its own. Gimme a warm slice and some butter spread on, or olive oil to dip and I am in heaven!
By keeping it simple, I get consistent results on the two breads I make: a white loaf with commercial yeast and a sourdough from levain. Honestly, I taste the sourdough to make sure it is edible, I make it exclusively for other people.
Again, to bring it to the original post, sticking with one bread and getting right is the basics of making good bread. Once you have conquered that basic 4 ingredient loaf, you can move on to more difficult stuff.
The one professional chef class I took only thing we were allowed to cook for the first 6 weeks was an egg. Getting that damn egg right every time in its myriad of forms was no easy task. Getting critiqued on fried egg after fried egg was a humbling experience.
We spent another 8 weeks getting the 4 mother sauces down cold as well. =)
So again, my recommendation to the OP is to get FSWY by Ken Forkish, or use the lessons here. My only nit pick about the process here is that they don't give metric weights.
Baking is all about the ratios, and ratios work better by weight than by volume.
"...50LBS@$18 US. That comes out to 34Cents per pound, which is about 20 pence per half kilo, I think..."
My last order from Shipton Mill, which was fractionally under 50lbs of mixed flours (white spelt, wholemeal spelt, wholemeal emmer and dark rye), worked out at about 25p/500g, so prices seem to be similar. Perhaps even cheaper if you're buying more 'mainstream' flours as 50lbs of the mill's organic strong white flour would be ~$39 at today's exchange rate. Buying in a supermarket can be pricey, however. A good, strong white flour can cost £1.20/kilo or about 85c/lb, if my maths is right.
[Later] Which it doesn't seem to be. Something's gone wrong somewhere in the multi-conversions but I'm too well fed and wined at the moment to work out what.
I have to confess I haven't really thought about exactly how much flour I'm using... As I mentioned in another thread, I'm still trying to figure out what I like, so I've got a lot of different things open. I think if I write down what I use to keep track, then I've got a funny feeling that I might surprise myself.
Have just had a look; on the small bags, Shipton Mill are pretty much of a muchness per kilo with the supermarkets on premium white & wholemeal, while their rye and spelt is a tad cheaper. The 10kg sacks work out at roughly the equivalent of the ordinary range flours per kilo. it only seems to be appreciably cheaper when buying the 25kg sacks, but I just don't have the storage space for those unfortunately.
I pay £1.79 for a 1.5 kg bag of Leckford Estate white bread flour, 95p for a 1.5 kg bag of Tesco's stoneground wholemeal, and £2.29 for a 1.5kg bag of Bacheldre Mill stoneground rye. The other day I snagged a 1.5kg bag of Duchy Organic white bread flour for £1.45 - but it was on promotion... The Tesco white bread flour isn't at all bad either (it's 95p for 1.5kg) - I use it when I'm catering yeasted cakes / pastries for charity functions.
Where Shipton Mill scores is on the stuff that you can't find off the shelf, but then the P&P comes back to bite :-p
"...the P&P comes back to bite"
Only if you pay for P&P. If you can buy £30 worth at a time you don't.
I'd struggle to find the storage space for thirty quid's worth... Well, space that's cat-proof, anyway. ;-)