Breadmaking - recipes, hints, tips, questions

moonrakerz

We are fairly Newbie bread makers, we got a Panasonic on the strength of the comments on MSE. Haven't bought a loaf of bread since we got it !

For "ordinary" bread we use the recipe in the Panny book for basic white loaf.
We put in a bit less salt than they call up, instead of milk powder and water we use 290ml of milk and water (50/50). Cook it on rapid or normal (the rapid loaf is a bit denser and slices easier), with light crust selected.
We have found the best flour to be Lidl's strong white.

Enjoy !

squeaky

lday77 wrote:

Thats great squeaky, thanks, is there a brand you would recommend? Are the cheap one's to be avoided?

I've made loaves with all sorts and with varying success. It depends on your recipe and your machine.

I've no doubt that some people have firm favourites - but I'm a flour tart

lister

lday77 wrote:

My o/h bought me a Panasonic for Easter yesterday and it was a bit of a disaster, I followed the recipe for a wholemeal rapid bake and we sat with bated breath for three hours and when it beeped we ran to the machine only to find a sunken loaf:-( what went wrong? I was using Carrs Whilemeal Flour and allinsons yeast.

Was it strong wholemeal flour? Even with a strong wholemeal flour, wholemeal loaves are always harder. You need a load more yeast than the equivalent white loaf and a load more liquid as well. There is less gluten in wholemeal flour (gluten holds the rise produced during the yeast fermentation process), and the flour itself is denser, so harder to rise.

Another thing to be careful of is how much salt you are adding. Salt inhibits yeast (too much will kill the yeast altogether), so you need to make sure you don't get the two into direct contact.

You might also find that replacing some of the liquid with an egg will help a little as well. I haven't tried making wholemeal with egg, but eggs are used in things like rye bread, both to help raise the loaf and to hold the rise.

Making good pure wholemeal bread at home is very hard. Commercially bakers cheat a little in ways that can't really be replicated at home (for example they will incorporate more water into the dough with specialised mixers - try this at home and you will end up with starchy sludge).

lday77

Thanks for those tips, I have bought waitrose strong white flour today and am going to have a bash at a basic white loaf tonight. fingers crossed it works this time.

I think looking back I might have added too much salt in the first one

Jolaaled

Following our Hot Cross Bun pebbles last weekend, i went out a bought some fresh yeast.

Today, followed recipe for a 50% wholemeal loaf, and was generous on yeast, and liquid.

I was so excited when it doubled in size in the first hour..but then the whole thing seemed to collapse and now i'm left with another brick.

I"m so disappointed and very jealous of all the success you're all having..What am i doing wrong..it's so frustrating, as well as wasting money.

ANY tips...pleaseeeeeeee.

lday77

PERFICK LOAF!

Worked a treaat just had goregous jam and butter on toast (takes me back to my childhood) and house smells of home cooked bread lurvely.

Thanks for your help, on Sunday afternoon if O/H hadn't been there I'd have chucked it out the window, but now I love my breadmaker :T :T :T :T :T :T

Swan_2

Jolaaled wrote:

Following our Hot Cross Bun pebbles last weekend, i went out a bought some fresh yeast.

Today, followed recipe for a 50% wholemeal loaf, and was generous on yeast, and liquid.

I was so excited when it doubled in size in the first hour..but then the whole thing seemed to collapse and now i'm left with another brick.

I"m so disappointed and very jealous of all the success you're all having..What am i doing wrong..it's so frustrating, as well as wasting money.

ANY tips...pleaseeeeeeee.

I've had that problem & in my case it was because the dough was too wet. it is really disappointing, it looks spectacular, then sinks
I've learned to be absolutely exact with the quantity of water & even then to check the texture of the dough & add a little flour a Tablespoon at a time if it looks too moist

also, from what I've read on the boards here, too much yeast can have a similar effect

I'm still learning, I've been successfully handmaking bread for decades, but the mechanical method is like starting all over again. so don't give up, keep trying


EDIT ... just read lister's post & wanted to add that I assumed you were using a breadmaker

lister

Jolaaled wrote:

Following our Hot Cross Bun pebbles last weekend, i went out a bought some fresh yeast.

Today, followed recipe for a 50% wholemeal loaf, and was generous on yeast, and liquid.

I was so excited when it doubled in size in the first hour..but then the whole thing seemed to collapse and now i'm left with another brick.

I"m so disappointed and very jealous of all the success you're all having..What am i doing wrong..it's so frustrating, as well as wasting money.

ANY tips...pleaseeeeeeee.

If it collapsed before heating it sounds to me like either the fermentation stopped, the yeast was poor, or perhaps the dough was overrisen.

Fermentation will stop when the yeast runs out of food (very unlikely) or the yeast is killed (perhaps due to salt or other additives, or more perhaps more likely, due to being proved at too high a temperature).

If the yeast is poor, most of the yeast organism is already dead. This means that what is left alive is insufficient to hold the rise. Sometimes you get almost no rise at all, other times you will have a collapse when it reaches a certain size as the stretched gluten proteins can no longer hold the weight of the dough up.

You can overrise a bread by leaving it too long, but if you have good yeast this is unlikely as the CO2 production from the yeast should cope. You can avoid this by knocking the dough back to remove the air and allowing the rise to start again. This allows you to prove for longer, which means more flour starch converts to maltose and the yeast generates more alcohol, so the bread has a better flavour.

You don't say if you are using a breadmaker or not. Unfortunately I have never used a breadmaker so have no idea how to rectify these problems in this case. By hand you have a couple of options. You can actually add more yeast to the collapsed dough, reknead and allow to rerise. It may not work out quite as well but should make a perfectly good bread. More kneading before proving will also help as this in effect strengthens the gluten proteins which hold the rise.

Or just use a little bit more yeast - I normally would use 30g fresh yeast to 500g flour, or 2 level teaspoons of easy-blend dried yeast. If you have used a lot less than this, it may be part of the problem, but you can easily lift 1kg of flour with 30g of good fresh yeast.

lday77

OHNOOOOO

More problems with my breadmaker - it's the Panasone SD-253, I got all the mix out last night, measured and put it in the pan....switched on the machine but couldn't get it off the setting: Rapid, extra large, white loaf.

The option buttons won't press...Because I had put all the ingredients in I thought I'd just let it run it's course as I thought it might re-set it's self.

The loaf turned out okay but it hasn't re-set itself and I can't get any of the options buttons to change - any ideas, I can't find anything in the manual.

lday77

It's okay, I have got it sorted, I have found out (from the nice people at Panasonic) that you are not supposed to press start/stop until you have pressed the options.

It's official I am a dumb@ss