:( Help me make perfect bread

sammy_kaye18

well excuse the expression but ive just belted the living daylights out of mine for abotu a minute and a half - and its in the tin being left to its own devices for a while now

double checked It is a 2lb loaf tin and i only used 1lb of flour so it should be ok - ill let you knwo if it goes disasterously wrong though - i didnt think it was goign to rise at first - left it an hour and it hadnt done much so i put the water on (my boiler system) is next to my cooker in the kitchen (not the big boiler water storage thingy!) so that soon warmed the room up a bit more na di went back in after another hour and it was huge! the first punch it deflated itself and - there was an odd smell - im guessing thats the yeast though! anyway beat it up a bit, and its in tin now liek i said so ill go in and see it at 5.50pm and bung it in the oven and let you know how i go.

Thanks Keth for all the help though. We do tend to just buy white bread but we seem to eat ALOT of it. I mean we have toast for breakfast, sandwiches, eggy bread some days, fried egg and bacon sandwiches on weekends, bread on butter as snacks, i take snadwiches to work on a friday and sunday so we get through alot of bread or it gets wasted because we dont eat alot -so i guess if im making a fresh loaf then it will be fresh and possibly last a bit longer and if i know i can make it i wont be without again - unless i dont have the ingredients obviously - and its another useful trade to put on my OS CV - breadmaker!

now i just need to learn to make butter and raise a few animals - mainly 2 cows, 2 pigs and some chickens and im totally independent!

meanmarie

Hi all,
My big problem with bread is that the loaf seems to be too small when it is baked...only about half a dozen slices when it is cut up...have a tefal bm and have at the moment put a loaf on with 750 grams of flour, hopefully it will come up higher and be worth the effort, but would be glad to know what I have been doing wrong. The machine came from Holland and has no number on it that I can find. My other problem is one of cost...strong flour is from €1.74 up and plain flour in places like Lidl and Aldi is €.48 for 2 kilos, but I find that the cheaper one makes inferior bread. I wonder if anyone can advise me, can I mix them 50/50 or some other combination that will lessen the cost?

Many thanks,

Marie

Justamum

I make my own bread, and after much experimenting have found that putting the oven on at 230c is too high. I have my oven at 180c and the bread is perfect after 40 minutes. I also leave the dough to rise for as long as possible for its first rising (apparently the longer rising does something to the components in the flour which makes it more digestible - it also seems to make the final loaf better). I have printed off Keth's recipe and will be trying it next time I make bread because it sounds tasty.

kethry

bigpaws23 wrote: »

Hmmm, dough seems a bit, erm, undercooked isn't the right word, but it's not quite dry enough in the middle.
Crust was well cooked though and I did have the shelf really low down because they looked like they were going to rise heaps (they did!)

My oven is regular electric with no fan.

Do you think I put a little too much water in the mix or didn't cook them for long enough?

Thanks for all your help!
Bigpaws x

Bigpaws:

you're welcome - with all the help i mean! i sometimes find the same thing, a little doughy in the middle at the bottom.. (but that doesn't bother me). if you did have the shelf really low down then i would suggest that you reduce the temperature a little bit, but you will have to leave it in the oven for correspondingly longer - maybe 40 minutes instead of 30. Did the loaf sound "hollow" when you took it out of the tin and tapped it? sometimes, and this works as well if you like the sides of the loaf to be a bit crispy, you can invert the loaf, pop it back into the tin (or rest it on the bars, upside down) and cook it for another five minutes or so at the end of cooking, just to firm up the bottom part/make it go brown a bit. That would also help with the doughiness factor.

As for too much water: if you find that the dough is sticking to the counter when you're kneading it, then yes, you've mostly got too much water. if you don't have enough water, then the loaf doesn't rise as well. From what you said, that the loaf was rising a lot in the oven when you cooked it, it may have been that there was more water in it than it needed (more water makes it more stretchy - pizza dough, for example, has a lot more water in it than bread dough to make it stretchier)... its one of those things that tends to change according to the type of flour, where you bought it from, even the time of year - you can buy the same ingredients week in week out from the same place and still get variation. The more you make bread, the more you'll learn when the dough "feels" right.. its very much an instinctive process (and part of why i love doing it). BTW the more you add "brown" ingredients - like stoneground/wholemeal flour or bran, the more water you'll need.

hope all that helps!

keth
xx

kethry

sammy_kaye18 wrote: »

well excuse the expression but ive just belted the living daylights out of mine for abotu a minute and a half - and its in the tin being left to its own devices for a while now

double checked It is a 2lb loaf tin and i only used 1lb of flour so it should be ok - ill let you knwo if it goes disasterously wrong though - i didnt think it was goign to rise at first - left it an hour and it hadnt done much so i put the water on (my boiler system) is next to my cooker in the kitchen (not the big boiler water storage thingy!) so that soon warmed the room up a bit more na di went back in after another hour and it was huge! the first punch it deflated itself and - there was an odd smell - im guessing thats the yeast though! anyway beat it up a bit, and its in tin now liek i said so ill go in and see it at 5.50pm and bung it in the oven and let you know how i go.

Thanks Keth for all the help though. We do tend to just buy white bread but we seem to eat ALOT of it. I mean we have toast for breakfast, sandwiches, eggy bread some days, fried egg and bacon sandwiches on weekends, bread on butter as snacks, i take snadwiches to work on a friday and sunday so we get through alot of bread or it gets wasted because we dont eat alot -so i guess if im making a fresh loaf then it will be fresh and possibly last a bit longer and if i know i can make it i wont be without again - unless i dont have the ingredients obviously - and its another useful trade to put on my OS CV - breadmaker!

now i just need to learn to make butter and raise a few animals - mainly 2 cows, 2 pigs and some chickens and im totally independent!

Sammy: again, you're welcome! Yes, the odd smell is the yeast. Personally, i like it - its reassuring, you know the yeast is live and working. When you make this batch, you'll probably find that its a huge hit and you'll be baking every other day for a while, purely because it'll get wolfed down. Especially if you made the half and half recipe i gave - it makes the bestest toast ever.. really crispy (and my OH throws a regular sulk if he doesn't get bacon and egg butties on a saturday with my HM bread!).

I can't help with the cows, pigs and chickens but.... there was a thread on here somewhere about making butter with cream. You might want to try it sometime if you spot reduced double cream - something about putting it in a jamjar and shaking it. you gotta do it for a while though!

keth
xx

kethry

meanmarie wrote: »

Hi all,
My big problem with bread is that the loaf seems to be too small when it is baked...only about half a dozen slices when it is cut up...have a tefal bm and have at the moment put a loaf on with 750 grams of flour, hopefully it will come up higher and be worth the effort, but would be glad to know what I have been doing wrong. The machine came from Holland and has no number on it that I can find. My other problem is one of cost...strong flour is from €1.74 up and plain flour in places like Lidl and Aldi is €.48 for 2 kilos, but I find that the cheaper one makes inferior bread. I wonder if anyone can advise me, can I mix them 50/50 or some other combination that will lessen the cost?

Many thanks,

Marie

Marie,

i don't use breadmakers, and i also don't know about prices in Euros, but i get my bread flour from either Tescos or Asda. I use a mix of white and stoneground flour. I can only give prices in £, but a 1kg bag of white costs around 50-60p, which will make me around 4 loaves, and a bag of stoneground costs around 90p to a £1, which will make me around 6 loaves.

the only other thing i can think of, if you plan to always make your own bread (and not buy shop bought) is to bulk order over the net, that may reduce your costs enough to make it worth while.

HTH

keth
xx

sammy_kaye18

Well my loaf came out of the oven at about 6ish - paniced because it was overflowing the side - big bulging top bit adn though it was goign to take over the tin (it didnt) - bread is yummy but still seems like it could of used 5 minutes more just to get the bottom fully cooked. but it is super yummy all the same.

Im down to half a loaf now - am goign to make soem rolls tomorrow because bf has just announced he wants packed lunch for the rest of the month - dont suppose you have a sweet bread recipe so i can make some iced finger buns keth?? lol

yeah the yeasty smell did smell nice - od but nice but at least it will be a reassuring smell liek you said. I loved the pfft noise the dough made with the first punch after it was left to rise - might get bakign more often now and have a loaf in the freezer - its nice to know i can do it more than anything because i was always told bakign bread by hand was really hard

kethry

sammy_kaye18 wrote: »

Well my loaf came out of the oven at about 6ish - paniced because it was overflowing the side - big bulging top bit adn though it was goign to take over the tin (it didnt) - bread is yummy but still seems like it could of used 5 minutes more just to get the bottom fully cooked. but it is super yummy all the same.

Im down to half a loaf now - am goign to make soem rolls tomorrow because bf has just announced he wants packed lunch for the rest of the month - dont suppose you have a sweet bread recipe so i can make some iced finger buns keth?? lol

yeah the yeasty smell did smell nice - od but nice but at least it will be a reassuring smell liek you said. I loved the pfft noise the dough made with the first punch after it was left to rise - might get bakign more often now and have a loaf in the freezer - its nice to know i can do it more than anything because i was always told bakign bread by hand was really hard

Sammy,

glad it came out ok!!! If you want to give it 5 minutes more, try turning the loaf upside down next time, either put it back into the tin, or if the oven isn't big enough for that, just rest it on the shelves, just enough to cook the bottom a lil more. That should help.

Fraid i don't have an iced bun recipe. But i do (somewhere) have a recipe for cinnamon whirls. Very easy to do, you make a pizza dough, roll out so its squareish in shape, sprinkle a combination of brown sugar and cinnamon all over one side, then roll it up, like a swiss roll, and cut slices, then lay them on their sides and bake them. Drizzle with icing to decorate. I'll look up the details for you later.

keth
xx

kethry

Cinnamon Rolls

450g Plain Flour
1.5 level tsp salt
30g caster sugar
2 tsp yeast
250ml tepid milk
55g dark brown or muscavado sugar
1.5 tsp cinnamon
Optional: zest of 1 orange and/or handful raisins

Glaze: 115g Icing sugar / hot water / lemon juice

1. Mix Flour, salt, caster sugar, yeast (and optional zest) in a bowl.
2. Add Milk, mix to form a dough, then knead till smooth.
3. Return to clean bowl, cover with a clean teatowel, and leave to rise for 1-2 hours till doubled in size.
4. Punchdown/knock back. Roll dough into a rectangle, roughly 30cm by 24cm. Mix the brown/muscavado sugar and the cinnamon (and optional raisins), then sprinkle over the dough, and press lightly into the dough.
5. Roll the dough, starting from the long side.
6. Use Cotton string to cut into 12 slices, arrange on a baking sheet. Re-cover with the teatowel and leave to rise for 30 minutes or so, then bake at Gas Mark 6/200*C/400*F for 12-14 minutes.
7. Make icing with icing sugar and water (or lemon juice), and drizzle over while still warm. Eat when cold. if you can wait that long. (I never can).

be warned: this isn't a flaky pastry type of cinnamon roll like you can buy commercially, but they are still absolutely gorgeous. You may need to leave it for longer than the 30 minutes to rise for the second time. This isn't my recipe - i got it from the net somewhere but unfortunately, i didn't write down where i did find it from when i copied it onto paper, so if anyone recognises it, please feel free to put me straight.

Have fun!

keth
xx

sammy_kaye18

Thanks Keth - may give them a go

Liek i said bf wants to start takign lunch boxes to work so what better to give him than homemade bread/rolls for his sandwiches, ahomemade cinnamon whirl for pudding and a few bits of fruit - sounds relatively healthy and chemical free actually!

Im wondering if iced buns are just basically rolsl with icing on top or does that sound a bit too simple - ill have to investigate and find a recipe