punge: d'oh!

I am a terrible bread baker. For someone that so loves baking and can happily make yeasted bakes like cinnamon rolls, it really really hurts that I've never produced a loaf of bread that I'm happy with.

I've tried many recipes, several times, the vast majority wholemeal, and it strikes me that my issues are so fundamental that really I need to go back to basics.

"Surely you're being too harsh!" I hear you cry? Well, if you want to break your teeth on dry, half-inch thick crust and toast your slice 3 times just to dry out the dense, spongy, and definitely not properly risen crumb, then stick with me, kid.

Bread baking isn't difficult, but I've been so lacking in some simple techniques that seem to make all the difference. Over a year ago I invested (both time and money-wise) in Michel Suas' Advanced Bread and Pastry (A Professional Approach), a seriously fat, somewhat dry textbook written for the pros on, you guessed, it, all things bread and pastry. I love it to bits and refer to it often. But with over 100 pages (full Uni textbook style, overcrowded, undersized-font, bigger-than-A4-pages) of detail for bread before getting to any recipes it's a lot to digest and remember, and even harder to find a simple answer in. When I bought this book I had an Amazon-basketfull of "baking bibles", including Paul Hollywood's "How To Bake" (or "How to Bake Paul Hollywood" as I like to Google it). I discarded those in favour of the Suas masterpiece, and am now reverting to a simpler, more user-friendly manual of a book with clear, concise instructions in a bid to help my efforts. So I'm learning and documenting how to bake Paul Hollywood, and combined with the wonders of the internets and the Great British Bake Off (GBBO) I think it's starting to work.

White tin loaf, and on steaming yer baps and rolling 'em tight

Just this week I learned that for a light, crisp crust (vs the cm-thick lead lined loaf I usually produce) you need to steam your loaf. I thought breads/yeasted goods didn't combine well with water in the oven (who can forget screaming at the telly through the "to steam or not to steam" rum baba escapade in GBBO? - for the record, my answer was a firm "Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!"). Yet in bread baking, steam is essential in obtaining the sort of crust that melts in your mouth vs the sort of crust that crushes your back teeth. And not just a smidge of steam either. Hollywood recommends quite a full roasting tin of the stuff in the bottom of the oven.

Also just this week, in what was almost a throwaway comment by Hollywood in GBBO, I came to realise the importance of a tightly rolled/folded dough for the final prove before baking, to give a proper rise and bake. Oh, and the importance of seasoning your loaf tin. Ahh, the simple things.

So verdict after one recipe: genius. I've turned out the first loaf I've ever been truly happy with in terms of texture, and by golly it tastes delicious too. I'll be stopping off to by some seeded raspberry jam on my way home and that's dinner for the next 2 days sorted.

The real test will be with wholemeal flour, notoriously behaving differently to white flour, requiring more water and having a lower gluten content than white bread. So the wholemeal tin loaf is next - stay glu(ten)ed!

Sorry, that was terrible. I have no excuse.

Wholemeal tin loaf, and on water

I've been sticking to the belief that my problems with bread till now has been because I mainly bake wholemeal bread. As such, I was expecting that my initial elation at the success of the white tin loaf was down to the gluten content being on my side, and that I would fall flat coming to the second recipe in "How to Bake Paul Hollywood"; the wholemeal loaf variation of the white loaf. This substitutes the majority of the white flour for wholemeal.

I needn't have worried.

With wholemeal flour you need a little more water as the flour is more hydroscopic. Also, as the flour has less gluten a lot of recipes call for a little white flour to boost the gluten content. There are more interesting tidbits of information about wholewheat bread on a breaducation, such as the wheat bran and germ can serve to sever the gluten strands (in a dough that already has less gluten than white bread), resulting in a weaker dough and a lower rise. This multitude of factors results in wholemeal dough typically rising less, thus the bread being denser.

Compare for example the difference in height achieved by the second proof of this wholemeal loaf vs the all-white (but otherwise same) loaf at the very top of this page.

Nuts, eh?!

Anyway, it baked well, I'm thrilled and looking forward to adding seeds and nuts next time. From what I understand from Michel Suas' Bread and Pastry, these should be gently folded into the dough after the first proof and not before, to minimise the seed's detrimental effects on gluten strand integrity. Am also very intrigued as to whether or not this luck will hold with a non-tin loaf or whether I'll suffer again from the dreaded dough spread. So next up, a plain white cob!

But for now, check out the beautiful wholemeal crumb! Made a delicious bacon avocado sandwich.

White cob loaf, over-kneading, and more on water

My first attempt at a non-tin loaf from the Hollywood book was a forgiving white cob loaf. With the same basic recipe as the white tin loaf above and equally delicious when done right, what could go wrong?

My common problem with non-tin loaves until now has been a pancake-like flattening of the loaf, resulting in a biscotti-like dryness and uselessness-of-shape. Concluding that all I really needed to do was make sure the cob was rolled really tight before second proof, I set about having another go.

And I got another fail. As you can see, pancaking was visible well before it went in the oven. I hoped it would recover in the oven but to no avail.

Undoubtedly, the crust was beautiful, the water-in-a-roasting-tin having done its job, and it tasted delicious, but the shape was still useless. I only got through half the loaf before having to consign the rest to crouton heaven on account of its super-long, thin slices.

So what went wrong?

Water, I think. I was too eager to make sure I had a soft dough post-mix and added too much water. Any self respecting bread baker-publisher highlights the different hygroscopicity of different flours, and as such it's relatively common knowledge that when baking with wholemeal flour you need more water than when baking with white flour. What I hadn't realised though, is to how large an extent one type of flour varies between processors (manufacturers), and this is pointed out in Hollywood's book. When I re-tried this recipe using about 50ml (~quarter of a cup) less than the 320ml in the recipe, lo and behold, a beaut with the best oven spring (final, in-oven rise) I've ever seen! So now I know. Allinson strong white bread flour, not as hygroscopic as the recipes in the book suggest.

On the flip side, I have over-kneaded this dough - the crumb is too tight, resulting in a less melt-in-the-mouth texture than I got with the tin loaf. I mostly knead my bread in my standing mixer, because I hate getting my hands caked in dough. I think there's a technique change I need to discover to stop the early mixing gloop from cementing itself to me. All in due time.

In the meantime, nom!

Next in the book is the 8-stranded plait. And look! Back during the last series of GBBO I had a go at this and it worked so I'm cashing it in now and getting ahead!

Next it'll be the wholemeal loaf, a knotted design that looks disturbingly like a giant turd.

Wholemeal Loaf

Ahhh. Wholemeal loaf. I pretty much prefer wholemeal loaf over white on health grounds, not to say that white bread doesn't hold a special place in my heart.

The wholemeal loaf recipe is similar to the white cob loaf recipe, with an 80% wholemeal bread flour content (percentage of the flours, not percentage of total ingredients), and the addition of a little extra butter. As expected, this loaf requires different levels of water than the white cob loaf, as it has a different protein content. I also tend to rest the dough for about 10 minutes just after all the ingredients have been incorporated and before kneading properly, to let the flours soak up the water properly and avoid over-kneading later.

And again, a perfect loaf, other than the disturbingly turd-like appearance. And as a bonus, there was a distinct croissanty flavour to it's crust. Om-nom nom nom nom nom.

Next up: Soda bread - ridiculously quick and deliciously cakey!

punge

Pages

d'oh!

White tin loaf, and on steaming yer baps and rolling 'em tight

Wholemeal tin loaf, and on water

White cob loaf, over-kneading, and more on water

Wholemeal Loaf

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