Jenny Makes Bread!

[jennyjj01]

Tonight's little play at making bread.

Ingredients 500g plain flour ( This was well past BBE ) Recipes recommend strong bread flour.
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried yeast
Mix together dry ingredients
Add 350ml warm water
Mix with a wooden spoon and then with the fingers.

Knead and stretch the dough for about 20 minutes over the bowl and then over a lightly floured worktop. Keep trying to slap it into a ball, merging in the bits from my fingers.

Now, if anyone can tell me how to stop it clinging to my fingers, tell me.

Flop it into a bowl, cover and let it prove in a warm room for two hours. Recipes usually say far longer. It will double in size.

Flop it into a silicone or metal loaf tin. I used silicone and didn't grease it. Knead it a little to burst big bubbles.

Into pre-heated fan oven at 180C for 40 minutes. Apparently, if it's cooked right, you can tip it from the tin and tell by the hollow sound when you'll tap the bottom. We'll see.

Photos and report to follow....
Report.
40 mins later I had a loaf... of sorts.
TLDR : Must do better.
It had a top crust like a skim of plaster, a sort of doughy feel when I tapped the bottom, but I dare not cook it any longer.
Cutting an end off revealed a somewhat doughy bread. It had the right amount of air bubbles.
It tasted doughy and not very nice on its own. Sort of heavy.

Still, that's why we experiment and practice. Better to know now than to find out later.

Footnote. I should have let it prove before baking

[Adjee]

We make all our own bread, dip your fingers into flour if they are sticking but the reason they stick is normally your dough is slightly to wet.

Plenty of recipes on line for no knead bread as well.

[jennyjj01]

We make all our own bread, dip your fingers into flour if they are sticking but the reason they stick is normally your dough is slightly to wet.

Plenty of recipes on line for no knead bread as well.

Cheers.
I'll try again, next time with fresher flour and maybe a different recipe. I didnt add butter as this is for a post butter situation. Maybe I'll add a little oil

[Yorkshire Andy]

It's a fine line between too wet and sticky and too dry

Dust hands with flour and keep dusting with flour till its not sticky but not cracking when squished into a ball

Once proved did you knock it back?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p008s5 ... %20elastic).

Also silicone is a poor conductor do heat takes longer to penitrate so it cooks much slower than a steel loaf tin

[jennyjj01]

It's a fine line between too wet and sticky and too dry

Dust hands with flour and keep dusting with flour till its not sticky but not cracking when squished into a ball

Once proved did you knock it back?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p008s5 ... %20elastic).

Also silicone is a poor conductor do heat takes longer to penitrate so it cooks much slower than a steel loaf tin

here's the basis of my recipe
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/basi ... read_18916

Cheers. I DID knock it back, but only briefly on the way into the loaf tin. I failed to re-prove it. I didn't get a nice smooth non sticky ball like she had. Actually it didn't look much like hers before I knocked it back.

I'll get a steel loaf tin and also try baking on a tray

Does anyone know how badly it might have been affected by the long expired flour? ( 2019 )
And should I add a little olive oil ( butter is off the table )

[Arzosah]

The photo of the bread looks great, Jenny. I won't be trying this though - 20 minutes kneading is out of bounds for me. Adjee mentions no knead bread, that's crucial in my neck of the woods. I've tried the no knead recipe a few times from Hart's Humble Homestead on YT (and bleated endlessly in the process) and I can make something edible but nothing that makes me go "ooh, nice, that feels like what I want".

ETA - I also have a no-gluten-allowed issue

[Ara]

Sometimes I find kneading it for a longer time stops it sticking to my fingers but I've never kneaded it for 20 minutes. I also use strong plain flour rather than the ordinary stuff. If I only have plain flour I tend to make soda bread although I rarely use the buttermilk all the recipes seem to recommend and have tried yogurt ( not entirely successful) or semi-skimmed milk (much better). It's almost always turned out well, the exception was when I used a gluten free flour so, sorry there Arzosah. All this talk of bread makes me want to go and make a loaf with the flour in the pantry - it's only slightly out of date i.e. last year.
This year I have noticed that the rise of the bread seems to be weather-dependent and my loaves rose a lot better in the hot summer.

[Kiwififer]

Looks great, well done!

Has anyone used a bread maker before? I quite fancy getting one, yeah it’s cheating as I should learn to make bread the Jenny way but it’s more for convenience than anything else.

I love my soup maker and use it a lot this time of year alongside my slow cooker, they are the only gadgets I have in the kitchen. I would be worried that if I get a bread maker, it would be used for a month then stuck away under the stairs like so many things!

[ForgeCorvus]

Strong bread flour is mainly ground from imported grain, something about the longer growing season gives you more gluten.
Historically bread was heavier and more dense then modern artisan breads partly because of the flour (which was closer to the general purpose flour you get today) and partly because thats what people expected their bread to be like.... Something heavy and dense that would fill you up.

You really need the second prove. Remember the dough is less elastic and won't hold the CO2 and alcohol vapours that cause it to raise as well so if I remember rightly you need a slightly hotter oven that you turn down after you put the bread in (the traditional wood fired ovens weren't heated during baking) and try a tinless loaf style to get the crust to set faster.

The flour being old didn't help but it isn't a deal breaker....... Unlike using post-BBE bread mixes, I've dealt with those in the past and while you can still get edible bread from them up to six months late they do need some tricks used.

Bread makers are great, you can use them to just make dough if you're lazy (like me) or don't have good wrists or hands.

Jenny: You still did a great job even though your flour wasn't ideal..... Better then my first loaf which would probably be just as edible today as when I baked it

[jennyjj01]

You really need the second prove....

Jenny: You still did a great job even though your flour wasn't ideal..... Better then my first loaf which would probably be just as edible today as when I baked it

Thanks,
I've made better bread before, but this was a practice run for my upcoming week on long life rations. I make bread so very rarely, so a breadmaker is out. Anything edible is a bonus and this was edible.
Next practice will feature flatbreads too.