Fresh Bread

[Qapla]

This thread is for general discussion of homemade bread making.

 

If you want to have a detailed discussion of a particular bread or style of bread - please start a new thread on that particular bread or style and title it to indicate exactly what the thread is about

[Qapla]

I make bread often. Usually, I do not weigh or measure anything ... I just eye what I add.

 

I made a loaf of rosemary-garlic bread for our Hospitality last Sunday.

[daydream]

Makes 1 loaf
Recipe from Mark Bittman & Jim Lahey via New York Times 

 

Ingredients

3 cups Community Grains Hard Red Winter Wheat Whole Grain Flour

¼ teaspoon instant yeast (or ¼ cup sourdough starter)

1 ¼ teaspoons salt

Extra flour or polenta as needed

 

Baking Instructions

In a large bowl combine flour, yeast (or starter) and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface, wet your hands, and gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Lightly oil a ceramic bowl, add your dough seam side down, cover with a cotton towel, and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will slowly spring back when poked with a finger.

At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from oven. Line pot with parchment paper, or generously coat with flour or polenta. Flip dough into your pot seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack for at least 1-hour.

 

https://www.communitygrains.com/recipe-items/mark-bittman-whole-wheat-no-knead-bread/

[daydream]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/opinion/culture/mark-bittman-whole-wheat-bread.html

 

Many of these new bakers discovered the magic of natural starters, too, also known as sourdough. This, the original, natural and in my opinion most flavorful leavener, is most commonly a mixture of water, flour and naturally occurring wild yeasts and other microcritters. Maintaining one takes less daily effort than making coffee or, for that matter, buying coffee. If you don’t have a starter in your fridge, you can start one now — it’s a lovely project for a holiday weekend — and be baking bread with it in three days.

 

That starter will encourage you to rediscover the bread that sustained us before flour was roller-milled and sifted and bleached, because sourdough performs miracles with whole grain flour. In fact, the steps needed to transform sourdough into 100 percent whole grain bread are far less challenging than those required to get into baking in the first place, and certainly more economical than buying bread of this quality.

 

[MullumMiss]

Pre covid I did Sourdough Bread making workshop.  I wanted to learn how to make my own sourdough bread.  Many many years ago I baked my own regular yeast bread.  When covid hit I did a series of videos and gave them with starters to a few of the sisters in the congregation.  They are now all baking too.  When I was a child in NZ my grandmother made what is called Rewena Bread.  It is a type of sourdough using a plant (starter) made out of cooked potato.  I wished I had taken more notice on how it was made as I would love to make it now.  It was cooked in a big camp oven container with the lid on.

[Qapla]

I have been baking bread for about 60 years. I have made sourdough in the past but do not always do it regularly enough to keep a stater going.

 

When I make NY style pizza dough I cold ferment it for several days to get the enhanced flavor - but, when making some of the soft buns, I like the fresh flavor of the fast rise from fresh yeast.

[lord-360]

Big fan of bread! The whole process is very enjoyable.

[MullumMiss]

2 hours ago, Qapla said:

I have been baking bread for about 60 years. I have made sourdough in the past but do not always do it regularly enough to keep a stater going.

 

When I make NY style pizza dough I cold ferment it for several days to get the enhanced flavor - but, when making some of the soft buns, I like the fresh flavor of the fast rise from fresh yeast.

I keep all my leftover or discard starter.  I use it to make pizza dough, crumpets, pancakes and waffles.  I have a pizza steel I use to cook the pizza's in our barbeque which gets up to about 700F.  This process imitates a wood fire.  I make the pizza dough either the day before or early in the morning of the day we have pizza.  We had pizza last night.

[Adelita1]

On 11/27/2021 at 3:45 PM, lord-360 said:

Big fan of bread! The whole process is very enjoyable.

That looks so so so good!