handmade bread

quintwins

i just used plain white flour as thats wat my recipe said (and i don't have any bread flour)

also is there anyway i can make bread in my bread maker with normal flour? bread flours very dear and if this bread looked like bread and has the right texture then surely it would in the bread maker aswell?

lucylucky

Plain white flour is not really ideal. Better with a strong flour of some sort.

It might look like bread but as you say it doesn't taste like nice bread

There was an offer in my local Tesco for Hovis bread flour the other day which is where I got mine.

angeltreats

Normal plain flour is too low in gluten to be suitable for bread. It just won't rise very well, and I don't think it would work in a breadmaker. It wouldn't really affect the taste though.

How much salt did you use? You need to be using about 1.5-2.5% of the flour weight in salt (so if I use say 450g flour, I would use about 7g salt). Too little salt will give you very bland bread.

quintwins

i only added a abit of salt which might acually be the prblem because i did it at the start and forgot to take into account the water i added to the yeast so had to add more flour, it not bad just abit bland my kids just had it for lunch

i saw somewhere there was offer on hovis flour (maybe on here) but it wasn't on in my store, and i saw about lidl bread flour aswell but they didn't have any in my store

quintwins

angeltreats wrote: »

Normal plain flour is too low in gluten to be suitable for bread. It just won't rise very well, and I don't think it would work in a breadmaker. It wouldn't really affect the taste though.

How much salt did you use? You need to be using about 1.5-2.5% of the flour weight in salt (so if I use say 450g flour, I would use about 7g salt). Too little salt will give you very bland bread.

it rose loads lol it after tea last night to go with the soup tonight and there was so much i made half last night for me and oh and the kids lunch and were still gonna have loads it more than doubled in size

angeltreats

It will be the salt that's the problem. It's also really important as it retards the development of the yeast and without it you'll have a poorer textured loaf which may overprove very quickly.

I once accidentally made a kilo of dough (two loaves) and forgot to put the salt in. They were absolutely horrible, they got turned into breadcrumbs

Lidl may just have been out of bread flour when you were there - every Lidl I've ever been in stocks it. It's great stuff and I use it all the time. Tesco does an own brand one that's pretty good too. Unfortunately you really do need to fork out the bit extra and buy proper bread flour.

quintwins

what do u mean by overprone?

i'll check in lidl next time i'm in, i don't go very often only when they have offers i'm interested in

angeltreats

Overprove. To prove bread is the same thing as to let it rise and let the yeast work its magic. If it proves, or rises, too much, it means the yeast will over develop, it may rise too high and collapse in on itself (sometimes you see bread that sinks in the oven), it can result in big air bubbles throughout the bread and just underneath the surface which gives it a nasty texture, and it can affect the taste and make it taste a bit yeasty or sour (because the yeast has been allowed to over-develop).

quintwins

ok thanks it didn't since and has no air bubbles so hopefully i had just enough thanks for your help

zippychick

ive merged this with the handmade bread thread which has an excellent bread roll recipe here

Lovely and moist and everyone will be surprised you made them

Zip