You did bake bread this weekend, right, anon?

  1. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    I did! I actually did! how did you know??

  2. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Yes. Dense shortbread, basically peanut butter oat cakes. A bit bland but high in protein and full of energy.

  3. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Not a loaf, but I did make pizzas for the kids.
    Sugardale brand pepperoni are the best. Not a paid advertisement

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      Thanks anon
      I was just looking for a new brand of pepperoni to try this weekend.. as the normal ones I get are garbage.

  4. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Ye. Challah. Will probably bake some baguette this coming weekend.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      I've been bad. I haven't made myself a loaf of bread in the past year when I used to make myself bread every weekend. Living too close to a grocer has spoiled me, I need to get back into it.

      Challah used to be my go-to, along with marble rye.

      Do you people just not live near stores that sell bread?

      Baking your own bread when you have the time is far more satisfying.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        Challah good. I need to practice some basic loaves though, lean doughs and the like. How's baguette?

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          baguette is fun and a huge reward if you do it right, but if you screw it up there goes a day of work, so either horrible or awesome for practice

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Is there any actual reason to do all the fussy shit with baguettes? Like, in your average artisan/high hydration bread recipe, they tell you to just give it a round or two of stretch-and-fold, then let it proof, but baguette recipes make you give it like 5 micro-rounds. And then baguette recipes tell you to give it like 3 additional shapings and rises instead of just shaping it, letting it have its second rise, and then into the oven. What's even the point of doing all that extra work? What is it doing to the bread?

  5. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Cookies but they became very flat. I found out this means my baking soda is old

  6. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Do you people just not live near stores that sell bread?

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      Cook your own food, you lazy consooomer fucks. Nothing compares to home cooked food. The only thing you should get from outside is raw staple ingredients. Everything else should be made at home. If most of the food you eat isn't home cooked, then you're a consooomer goy living in a capitalist dystopian society, not a proper country with real culture and (culinary) traditions.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        I ain't about to make barbacoa at home, shit takes all day and I'd rsther use my spare time doing other things. Some things are better purchased.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      I live seven blocks away from Ken Forkish's bakery, but I'm not going to stand in line to pay $12 for two ciabatta rolls. Plus, there's no substitute for having a house full of bread smell.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        >there's no substitute for having a house full of bread smell
        Except a house that smells of fresh pussy

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      So you've never had homemade banana bread? Do you take your bananas to the store and ask them to bake them into banana bread for you?

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Gonna complain about how Americans have no access to good cheeses too, Josh?

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      have a nice day immediately homosexual nagger go overdose on fentanyl cunt

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Always one contrarian homosexual

  7. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    For the first time actually. Thanks for proving the this board is a simulation made just for me

  8. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    i can tell that you added flour after it was done. stupid

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      No. more embarrassing, I dusted too much before the bake. I was popping it in the oven in the middle of a game with friends and was in too much of a rush getting back to think about how much flour I grabbed when I threw it on there

  9. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    I didn't because my slam pig makes me a sourdough loaf every week

  10. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    No. Im a lazy fuck. I did mix flour with water, and made flatbreads. Then ate them with greek yogurt.

  11. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    i did but they looked funny

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Looks like your oven is shitty like mine and doesn't correct the temperature after the door's been open. Try resetting the temp to what you want after you put your bread in.

  12. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    >Cold ferment, RT ferment, using a preferment
    >IDY, vs ADY, vs Yeast blocks vs sourdough
    >no knead vs 1 knead vs kneading it twice after the inital proof
    >Dutch oven, pizza stone, using cast iron pans.

    Why the hell is this shit so complex

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous
    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      Once you actually learn it's super easy. I don't use recipes anymore for bread I just throw shit together that's roughly the right bakers percentages for what I want and mix the shit together. Once you get good at shaping even a dogshit recipe can turn into a loaf, and if I really fuck up I just throw it in a loaf pan and it still turns into bread.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      People like to over-complicate the most basic of things to gatekeep. Bread baking, fishing, exercise, ect. One generation after the next adds some spin on things then eventually you have niggas fly fishing with a suv full of gear condemning you for buying scented bait from Walmart.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        Me and my child caught a fish with a slim jim as bait. It was a river near a park. You have to learn to think like a fish. Kids are going to be dropping their snacks in that water.

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          I remember visiting my cousins and all we had was lines and hooks so we tied them to sticks to fish but had no bait. Then along comes a guy to prepare a fish at a table they had for it. We asked if we could have some of the innards and scraps for bait. He ignored half a dozen kids and threw it straight to the gulls in the water, though we did see some fish going for it.

          Haven't been fishing since.

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            That guy is based.
            Fuck stupid dumbass annoying kids
            FUCK CHILDREN

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      just make the hearth bread from King Arthur flour. meme baking does produce better results, but that simple recipe produces a flavorful crusty bread that doesn't take 48hrs start to finish.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      It doesn't have to be complex but, like a hobbyist who knows a lot about there hobby, there are things that can make one product one way and another product another way that people have noticed and name over time (and passed on using names).

      Some people like things one way and have named the instruments and methods. Other people like thing another way and have named the instruments and methods.

      In the end, if all you want is bread, it's just flour water, yeast and heat. If you want a certain kind of bread, then be certain that knowledge is the path to that.

  13. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    what kind of asshole bakes their own bread

  14. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    yeah a simple wheat bread but im gunna make rye tomorrow to go with my Mascarpone

  15. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Gluten? EUGH!

  16. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    why is there flour all over it?

  17. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Gonna be making some banana bread tomorrow because a girl at work convinced me to

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      My secret tip is to add strong coffee to it. Like one or half a cup or something depending on size/weight. It won't taste coffee outright and the slight bitterness goes really well with the sweet banana. Had huge success with one recently.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        I'm thinking of making them as muffins to make it easier to bring in, probably do a brown sugar/rum glaze and might add a bit of peanut butter. Maybe I'll try a shot of coffee, though all this being said now I'm worried about too much going on with it.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        >banana bread
        I use coconut oil and ghee as my fat usually, though sometimes olive works too (I usually reserve it for pumpkin bread). Swapping coffee in for water is probably a good way to get flavor in, but if your recipe doesn't call for any water, just use coffee powder.

  18. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    I did. I've made a ton of pizza for a long time but recently been working on French baguettes. I've finally settled on a hydration and workflow after watching a bunch of videos. 70%; autolyse then mixer with starter and yeast, then salt; stretch and fold, 1 hr rest, refrigerate 24 hours, warm up 1 hr, preshape, 30 min rest, final shape, 1 hour proof, score, bake with steam 20 min@ 520. They externally they look quite good and taste awesome but I can't get the crumb to be open enough yet. Don't know if it's the dough or my shaping.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      I figure you would need a higher hydration for an open crumb wouldn't you?

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        I’ve done 75% too. Most videos I’ve seen are 70 or 75. 80 is ciabatta territory. Either way it should be less dense. I got it right once, where the crumb was pretty open and shiny, but I have no clue why it was good that one time.

        You should record the temperature of your dough before your bulk fermentation (1 hr rest before you refrigerate). It should be in the goldilocks zone between 76 and 80F so that your yeast gets maximum spread before your cold ferment. Basically, I think you're probably not working your dough enough before fermentation. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, use that. If not, you're going to need to kneed by hand for a while.

        I have the basic KA mixer and hate how it kneads.I need to get a better one.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      You should record the temperature of your dough before your bulk fermentation (1 hr rest before you refrigerate). It should be in the goldilocks zone between 76 and 80F so that your yeast gets maximum spread before your cold ferment. Basically, I think you're probably not working your dough enough before fermentation. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, use that. If not, you're going to need to kneed by hand for a while.

  19. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    I don't own a breadmaker.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      You don't kNEED one thDOUGH

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        (You) (complimentary)

  20. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    just a simple loaf for some soup. i've been making this once a week for a while now.

    300g bread flour
    220g water
    15g sesame oil
    6g salt
    3g yeast

    mixed it, stretch and folded it 3 times over its 24+ hour cold ferment, shaped up, proofed in the pan for 2 hours. 30 minutes in a 430F oven, 10 more minutes out of the pan to crisp up the crust.

  21. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    My mom did
    I didnt wake up in time to do it myself

  22. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Was traveling this weekend, so didn't bake a bread. Planning to do that this weekend of next though

  23. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Made those banana bread muffins, added a shot of coffee and some pumpkin Hispanice in the batter. Glaze is brown sugar and a bit of rum. Turned out pretty good, though the recipe I used was supposed to be a dozen it only made 8 and a half.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      10/10 would eat

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        thanks, brought a couple to work and my coworkers liked them too

  24. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    i do sometimes, but not this weekend. i'm not a habitual wheat eater. not avoiding it, i'm just not boring

  25. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Been doing sourdough for the past 2 months. Best one so far. 65% hydration dough is so nice to work it

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      Recipe and instructions please

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        175g sourdough starter (100% hydration)
        775g strong wheat flour (14% proteins)
        100g Rye flour
        538g water
        18g salt

        mix water and flours, 30 min autolyse, add salt, incorporate and rest for 30 min, 3 stretch a folds 1 hour apart from each other, over night proofing room temp (70F) for about 8 hours, preheat dutch oven at 500F, bake at 450F for 25 min with lid, 23 min without lid, 2 min at high broil for crust if needed

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          I intentionally left out the obvious steps. If you've baked sourdough before you'll know what to do in some of the inbetween steps.

        • 1 month ago
          Anonymous

          >over night proofing room temp (70F) for about 8 hours
          Really? My sourdoughs would be seriously over fermented at this point.

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            That particular mix did not double in size until then. So if your dough doubles in size earlier, even better

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            70F is pretty cool for yeast, I often see it take two or more hours longer to ferment at 70F vs 75F

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      >bakes the useless type of bread that has no structural integrity
      Bravo redditor

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      175g sourdough starter (100% hydration)
      775g strong wheat flour (14% proteins)
      100g Rye flour
      538g water
      18g salt

      mix water and flours, 30 min autolyse, add salt, incorporate and rest for 30 min, 3 stretch a folds 1 hour apart from each other, over night proofing room temp (70F) for about 8 hours, preheat dutch oven at 500F, bake at 450F for 25 min with lid, 23 min without lid, 2 min at high broil for crust if needed

      Ah, nevermind. What is autolysing? I know auto, and I know lyse but I've only heard of it in the context of biology protocols.
      Does sourdough not require kneading? Does it have to be rye flour? I'm going for something that would be good with seafood.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        autolysing is just a fancy term meaning that the flour, starter and water are getting to know each other before incorporating the salt. Not a key step, but if you have the time it doesn't hurt

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        >What is autolysing?
        You mix the water and flour, no salt or yeast, and let it sit for an hour or two. The water blooms the starches, and the gluten links up. Bread that started out with an autolyse step often doesn't need kneading, at most they'll need 8-12 stretches to help align the gluten. If you ever see people talking about "no-knead" bread you can be pretty sure there's an autolyse step.

        I've never baked bread before. Can someone just tell me, simply, how I would make a sourdough loaf? It's my favorite.

        You make it similarly to regular bread, but you use sourdough starter instead of regular baker's yeast, and the last part of the proofing is usually done in the refrigerator for 8-24 hours before baking. The cold-proofing helps intensify the sourdough flavors by drastically slowing yeast fermentation (preventing over-proofing) while still allowing the lactobacteria and acetobacteria to do their thing producing that sourdough tang.
        BTW you can make something that tastes similar to sourdough by substituting vinegar for some of the water in a regular bread recipe, since the sour tang of sourdough comes from lactic and acetic acid. Sourdough starter contains both yeast and the bacteria that produce lactic and acetic acid.

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          >You mix the water and flour, no salt or yeast, and let it sit for an hour or two. The water blooms the starches, and the gluten links up. Bread that started out with an autolyse step often doesn't need kneading, at most they'll need 8-12 stretches to help align the gluten. If you ever see people talking about "no-knead" bread you can be pretty sure there's an autolyse step.

          NTA but I've wondered something about autolyse. The dough is pretty nice after the autolyse but when I add the starter and salt it tends to "degrade" into something a little shaggier when I mix. Should this be done gently to avoid that or am I just imagining things?

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >65% hydration dough is so nice to work it

      I'm a noob and want to ask instead of googling in the interest of thread conversation and maybe getting a protip from someone who knows: what is 65% hydration bread (aka how/why is it made and what makes it noteworthy)?

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        Ratio's between ingredients determines the hydration %

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          Thanks. I get it now.

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            >50% the loaf was small and dense
            >puffiest loaf in the pic

            • 4 weeks ago
              Anonymous

              Sometimes people used phrases when others would be better served if they stopped and split the phrase into its constituent parts, employing only what is accurate and true.

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Also this if you want more info

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            The fuck is this? 80% hydration doesn't look like that if you put in the work to actually develop the gluten. Is this seriously comparing different hydration doughs if you just quickly mix, bulk and chuck it in the oven as is?

            • 4 weeks ago
              Anonymous

              Probably used AP flour.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      The hydration level is only very loosely correlated with how the dough feels; that is a combination of a lot of different factors. I made a 79% hydration ciabatta this weekend that was an absolute dream to work with. But I used 14.2% flour.

  26. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    I buy it from a bakery like a normal person. Maybe when I retire I'll be able to justify spending 2 to 3 hours a week in time to save what 6 dollars?

  27. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Been a few weeks since I made some sourdough so I hope this crumbshot is familiar to some of you.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      Just took a fat, supermarket style Italian loaf out of the oven to make sandwiches with some pastrami I made over the weekend though.

  28. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    I've never baked bread before. Can someone just tell me, simply, how I would make a sourdough loaf? It's my favorite.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      I hope someone answers you. I also like sourdough, I'd like to make some too but I think I'm too whimsical to feed a starter for days. I'd end up not wanting it (The dough/bread) by the time that it's ready.

  29. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    yes indeed, I made a Pullman Loaf using a legit Pullman pan. It did not rise quite as much as a regular white bread but still proud of myself.

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      pic of inside

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        pic of pan that I used

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        That's sexy. I bet that can make one hell of a sandwich.

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        >pic of inside

        https://i.imgur.com/ukpt110.jpg

        pic of pan that I used

        >pic outside

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          Really jogs the noggin-er

  30. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    is there an infographic for simple recipes (challah,baguette,etc)

  31. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    Love me some sourdough.

  32. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    I have so little space on my countertop. I constantly crave bread but all the store bread is poison.
    Should I suck it up and get a breadmaker or build a whole fucking folding countertop?

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      fuck bread makers, do you have a oven/stove?
      you really don't need that much room , just get creative.
      a stove top cover is all the space need to knead dough and you can proof in the oven

  33. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    i read earlier in the thread about a sink cover but a stove cover sounds like it would be way easier
    severe anxiety over cooking and being poor, to the point where i'll buy $50 of groceries and then eat out twice as much and make maybe one or two meals out of it
    i've made bread before, but it was so laborious on my only cutting board on a rickety little table that requires you to bend over to use

    • 1 month ago
      Anonymous

      bending over and kneading sucks!
      i would look for a stove cover that has a lip so you're not knocking flour down the sides of the oven and one thats not pushing down directly on the burners so you don't break one like me

      • 1 month ago
        Anonymous

        good for me I have a shitty electric stove so there's no burners to break

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >severe anxiety over cooking and being poor, to the point where i'll buy $50 of groceries and then eat out twice as much and make maybe one or two meals out of it

      You should explore some cooking vids on tiktok until you find some cooking tiktoks that make you feel comfortable doing the same. "Simple" and "Easy" are some keywords to include in your search so they it's not something that could be simple but instead has 10, 15 or 20 ingredients.

      I like simple food.

  34. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    The problem with bread is the fact that it contains gluten and sugar. Sugar is poison! Gluten is poison!
    Stop the insanity. Stop eating bread.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      (You). A for effort. A man's gotta eat though and food is getting so expensive that it's almost time to go back to basics and home cooking. I hope that corporations lose their reputations as people return to scratch making as well.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        have a nice day, oh wait, you are! Lol!

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          Is this what it's like to see a hungry ghost before they die and become a hungry ghost?

  35. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    No but I baked a loaf just now at 4am

  36. 1 month ago
    Anonymous

    My mom had themis cuisinart breadmaker that is supposed to make bread for you if you pour in the ingredients but it always comes out to light in the center and it just falls apart if you try to cut into the center.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      User error or designer error or machine flaw?

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        I'm not sure. You're supposed to just pour all the ingredients in and let it work. I swear I try to measure stuff out exactly according to the recipe. Other people make bread out of these things and they work so maybe its me.

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          A food scale. Do you have one? Maybe you're putting too little of this or too little of that. I know that, in america, standard measuring cups are very by-the-brand's standards rather than universally standard. I had three measuring spoons and each one measured the same amount (1 tablespoon) differently. And half a cup is 8 tablespoons but when I checked based on those spoons, it didn't line up to the cup's markings.

          Assuming that a scale is accurate by gram and oz and so on, then a scale is the way to go if you want precision and accuracy in your baking.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        no all thof them do exactly that

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      see

      have a bread machine, a loaf came out with flour caked on the outside
      you need to put in all the liquid first, and the solids on top, the machine will mix it all, no more flour pockets stuck on bottom of loaf pan

      ?

      Is this helpful?

  37. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    >make Rye
    >have some fresh with homemade Mascarpone(thanks chef John) and smoked salmon
    >delicious
    >excited to eat more
    >wake up
    >sick, nauseous with no appetite
    fug

  38. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    I didn't. I think I'll get into bread making though. Seems healthier and probably cheaper.

    I did however, make toast in my toaster oven for the first time. I made an open faced tomato sandwich (I live in the south, don't come for me). The toast was elite-tier for sure. It was toast-y all the way through, instead of crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside like I've gotten mostly all my life from uni-tasking toasters. This will probably be my go to from now on. That bread was sturdy, crunchy and held up to the last morsel.

  39. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    anybody try using bacon grease instead of oil/butter?

  40. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Making 100% rye 80% hydration sourdough. Currently bulk fermenting before getting transferred to two bread pans and a cold proof over night.
    Usually only make danish rye with scalded seeds or christmas Hispaniced rye so this is a bit new.
    There's no point trying to knead it right? There's just about 0g of gluten in this. Though I've ordered extracted wheat gluten to try that next along with some special bread pans and new ferment baskets.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      i dont knead any bread any more, but i always stretch and fold it a few times over its ferment

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        It's nigh impossible to stretch and fold 100% rye. You just tear off chunks since there's no elasticity from any gluten. At best you can sort of displace the dough a little.

  41. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    I need to stop baking bread because every time I do I go medieval peasant mode and end up eating half a loaf a day as if I was going to be toiling in the fields or making a trek to the nearby village.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Same. I have to cut it up and freeze some of it as quickly as I can. But I can't do that while it's hot, so while it's cooling I end up eating a third or half the loaf.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      I find baking multiple loaves and giving some away helps with the self loathing incurred by eating 3000 calories of bread and butter in a day.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        This. I'm supplying 3 households with their weekly bread at this point. My freezer if full of bread I probably won't eat (I go for the most recent ones first).

        I'm trying to find ideas what to do with all my damn half-dried frozen bread. Can I feed ducks in the park with it if it's proper sourdough or will it screw them up like store bought white wheat loaves?

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >I need to stop
      Why? Because of overeating? Honestly, peasant mode mindset is elite. Being able to be satisfied with little is elite-mode.

  42. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    have a bread machine, a loaf came out with flour caked on the outside
    you need to put in all the liquid first, and the solids on top, the machine will mix it all, no more flour pockets stuck on bottom of loaf pan

  43. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Ok bros, I did the trick where you use a spray bottle to spray some water into the oven right after you put the bread in. For some reason, it produced a flash of strongly sweet-smelling air that almost immediately dissipated. The bread doesn't smell sweet. What was that? Is it common? Was that just the water caramelizing some burnt stuff in the oven, or was it some kind of decomposing chemical that I should not ever do again? I can't find any results about this online.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Also, do people usually say dense crumbs are bad? I bake a lot of fully whole-wheat loaves, and I swear that shit always comes out really tight unless you've got a crazy hydration ratio of 100%+ and basically it's not even dough anymore but instead batter. I've tried messing with everything I can think of but it's always dense, I think it's because of how the bran in the whole grain shreds gluten -- you either have no gluten at all because it just wasn't kneaded or you do knead it and the bran shreds a certain fraction of it, inhibiting rise. Furthermore I can't recall ever seeing a whole grain crumb (whole wheat, rye, etc) that wasn't really dense so at this point I'm ready to give up and say it can't be done because I can't afford a commercial steam-injected oven to test on industrial baking equipment. Now, I've kind of gotten used to the dense crumb because it's good for sandwiches and jam/butter spreads and shit, but is this just a cope? All the crumbshots are of really light and airy loaves.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        Ok bros, I did the trick where you use a spray bottle to spray some water into the oven right after you put the bread in. For some reason, it produced a flash of strongly sweet-smelling air that almost immediately dissipated. The bread doesn't smell sweet. What was that? Is it common? Was that just the water caramelizing some burnt stuff in the oven, or was it some kind of decomposing chemical that I should not ever do again? I can't find any results about this online.

        Wait, in fact, I'm seeing articles online about how bakeries "cheat" and add extra vital gluten powder to whole wheat doughs to make them fluffier than nature would allow, and that this is the quasi-officially recommended fix for dense loaves. Ok I feel much better now about my skills. I was really starting to get concerned I was doing something very wrong.

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          My last follow up post before I shut up and stop blogposting. Here is the crumb. Is this actually fine and I'm just making a big deal out of nothing?

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            That doesn't look good if it's a high gluten white wheat recipe. I recently ordered extra vital gluten powder to add to my rye doughs and see what happens. I'm not sure how much this affects the nutrients of the dough but if it's mostly better rise I'm all for it.
            It's much worse when they sell "sourdough bread" and all they did was add 5-10% sourdough TOGETHER with industrial yeast (guess which sponge wins the war of the carbs?). So they technically added sourdough but effectively that poor natural slow yeast is terminated by the modern hyperactive yeast.

            Regardless, you should have a better crumb without vital gluten added. Even if you don't like big air holes it should have many tiny ones to show uniform fermentation.

            • 4 weeks ago
              Anonymous

              I can get more uniform bubbles if I add more hydration. I'd guess this dough was at about 60%-70%, though I wasn't measuring exactly at the time. I've made 100% hydration doughs before and the crumb comes out looking like the kinds of tiny holes you'd see in a sponge. However I've been dialing the hydration back recently because doughs that wet are annoying to work with and they tend to stick to the baguette pans I've bought (which have perforations in them). Dough this dense does remind me a lot of the footage I've seen on channels like Townsends and Tasting History, where they bake ancient breaks and it comes out looking dense as fuck. So maybe that's just it? You unambiguously NEED some crazy high hydration ratio for whole wheat in the ~100% or higher range?

            • 4 weeks ago
              Anonymous

              I can get more uniform bubbles if I add more hydration. I'd guess this dough was at about 60%-70%, though I wasn't measuring exactly at the time. I've made 100% hydration doughs before and the crumb comes out looking like the kinds of tiny holes you'd see in a sponge. However I've been dialing the hydration back recently because doughs that wet are annoying to work with and they tend to stick to the baguette pans I've bought (which have perforations in them). Dough this dense does remind me a lot of the footage I've seen on channels like Townsends and Tasting History, where they bake ancient breaks and it comes out looking dense as fuck. So maybe that's just it? You unambiguously NEED some crazy high hydration ratio for whole wheat in the ~100% or higher range?

              Also I forgot to add: although it might not look it, there are small air holes. The bread is very elastic, if I try squeezing it it springs back immediately.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                One last picture now that I'm home and properly cut into one of these baguettes with a knife. Some bubbles but still pretty brick-like, like a network of micro-bubbles. It is springy though. I'm thinking this might actually be overworked? I've been taught it's basically impossible to overknead dough by hand but maybe that's a much lower bar with a whole grain flour. 8-10 minutes of kneading may have been too much. I will have to keep experimenting. Baking with whole wheat is kind of fun, you have to throw out almost everything you know about breadmaking.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                >with a whole grain flour
                There's your explanation. Whole grain flour has much less gluten than white wheat flour and as such will have a much reduced oven spring, regardless the amount of kneading. Even worse with rye.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                I knew it would be worse but I guess I didn't know how much worse it would be. If you're saying that actually looks pretty good for the type of flour being used, I'll be satisfied. I just thought it would be good to take a photo of a proper cut instead of a haphazard rip in half.

            • 4 weeks ago
              Anonymous

              >So they technically added sourdough but effectively that poor natural slow yeast is terminated by the modern hyperactive yeast.

              If I recently started a sourdough starter with active yeast, did I really start a sourdough starter, even if I'm feeding it every day and waiting for it to double (Etc) or did I make an abomination?

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                I'm not entirely sure. Maybe the fast acting yeast dies off over time after consuming what it can, which might allow the natural yeast to take over eventually. As long as it doesn't act like active yeast and doubling in size over an hour or two I would guess it's fine.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                >did I really start a sourdough starter
                No. But it may well turn into one after awhile. Keep feeding it with whole wheat for a week and see what happens. Since you started with an active culture there's no need to feed it every day, every 3 days or so would be enough. You're just keeping the yeast going while waiting for the sourdough bacteria to show up.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                I messed up and restarted a different one (I fed it without discarding and, since I had bread flour on hand that I wanted to start my starter with anyway, I threw out the old one and started a new one.

                I'm on day 2 (hour 38) of my bread flour sourdough starter. I'm following this guide (which is, I think, dope af and very detailed. It even has sourdough discard recipes): https://www.theclevercarrot.com/2019/03/beginner-sourdough-starter-recipe/

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                I prefer this walkthrough of creating a sourdough starter by a professional baker who used to bake at King Arthur. It really is dead simple.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                I really like how exhaustive the thing I'm using now is. It's got a lot of info and I already and the kind of person who has an uses a food scale outside of baking so 🙂

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                It's unnecessarily overcomplicated because she is an amateur who doesn't really know what she's doing, she's just throwing in every single thing she's ever heard. The reality is it's almost impossible to prevent wet flour from turning into a useable sourdough starter within just a few days, but she does her damnedest to pull off that ignoble feat.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                If I understand you correctly then, no matter if I'm lax with it or uptight with it, I will end up with usable sourdough starter, yes?

                So either way it's well and good, no?

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                You could just go back to r e d d i t if you're going to have this weak bitch mentality.

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                You're upset for what?

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          Bakeries cheat about almost everything. Those amazing smelling sourdough loaves? They just add lactic and acetic acid, which is much cheaper than a room-sized walk in refrigerator needed to proof those loaves for days to get that flavor naturally. Those amazing open crumb loaves? Just add a few % of gluten, it makes it almost impossible to *not* get a wide open crumb, even your average minimum wagie can't fuck it up.

  44. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    I made pretzels with real sodium hydroxide

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      >sodium hydroxide
      nice they look good
      i don't fuck with lye because i don't want to risk etching my cookware or myself

  45. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Just made it for the first time last night, that was so cool and I wish I started to make it sooner.

  46. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Just got done with some banana bread dinner rolls.
    That is, actual bread with banana in it, not cake. I don't eat cake.

  47. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    I'm baking bread right now. The house smells fantastic.

  48. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    ok, I burnt it.

  49. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Yup, baked a weekly loaf of country white and whole wheat.

  50. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    No but I kind of want to fuck around and learn how to make raisin bread

  51. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    The bottoms of my loaves keep coming out too dark. I can obviously lower the oven temp but from what I've read, sourdough needs a higher temp for the best spring, so I'm wondering if I should adjust temp or time first. Baking in a dutch oven @ 450, 25 min covered, 15 uncovered.

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Try moving the bread around in the oven? As in, have it on a higher or lower rack? I know how you feel. Every time I try baking bread in my dutch oven the bottom comes out burnt black, and I think it's because the Dutch oven is either positioned wrong or because it's too physically dark. The bottom of my dutch oven has a few black spots on the bottom which I know are roastimg the dough similarly to how asphalt is like 20 degrees hotter than the air because dark materials trap more heat. For me, I just dropped the heat because otherwise my bread burned.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        I'm using the middle rack currently but I'll try raising it and seeing what happens. My Dutch oven isn't enameled so it is pretty dark. Maybe I aught to get an infrared thermometer and check the temp of the dutch oven walls to see the difference. Reading a bit more, some people also suggest putting a baking tray or pizza stone on a rack under the dutch oven or putting down a layer of rice/oats inside the DO and putting parchment paper on top of that before putting your dough in. I've got some testing to do this weekend.

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          >some people also suggest putting a baking tray or pizza stone on a rack under the dutch oven
          I hope you mean a pizza stone that HASN'T been preheated, because otherwise that would add a shitload of extra heat which seems like the opposite of what you want right now.

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Yeah, not preheated so that it can take some of the heat. I don't have one, myself, so I'll try the baking sheet. I'll make a thread if one of the methods ends up working well enough.

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            >would add a shitload of extra heat

            Don't ovens stop adding heat when the desired temperature is reached? Wouldn't the pizza stone, preheated or otherwise, merely be the same ambient temperature as the rest of the oven?

            • 4 weeks ago
              Anonymous

              When you add cold food to a hot oven, the heat transfer from hot to cold drops the temp of the cooking surface, temporarily lowering the rate of cooking until everything can get back up to temp. Note: this doesn't actually matter except in very niche cases where you want the food to get blasted with nonstop relentless heat from the beginning. Like pizza, where getting the right level of char on the bottom crust requires the bread to get nuked from minute 0 onwards. The stone/steel helps with that because of the sheer volume of heat it traps. The miniscule quantity of heat needed to force the cold bread up to temp produces only like a 1 degree temp change in the steel, unlike, say, a much thinner preheated pan, so it can deliver that extra relentless heat needed for good pizza. Similar story for baking flatbreads like pita. But the bottom line is that if anon is complaining that his dutch oven setup is already too hot, adding in that extra heat is the last thing he wants. If anything, he'd want to add a cold pizza steel to the oven since it's now absorbing titanic quantities of heat instead of adding it, and thus would slow down the cooking (hopefully not by too much).

              • 4 weeks ago
                Anonymous

                I see. I speed-read some parts of the previous comment and formed an incorrect picture of what he was saying.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        >because it's too physically dark.

        Does physical color of cookware really affect the outcome of backed goods? I have a coil oven and dark cookware. If I switched to a piece of aluminum colored cookware, would the bottoms of my baked goods turn out lighter than before?

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          >Does physical color of cookware really affect the outcome of backed goods?
          yes darker colors will heat up faster but also distribute heat more evenly.
          Car maker used to paint their engines cool colors until they figured out it helped with even block temps

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Wow. I heard that but I didn't believe.

  52. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    You guys with sourdough starter that you upkept or upkeep yourself: all-purpose flour or bread flour?

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      I've been using bread flour. Higher protein content in bread flour needs higher hydration, so you can just add a bit more water when feeding.

      • 4 weeks ago
        Anonymous

        So I can't do 50/50 by weight? I'm following a sour dough starter guide ( just restarted today after feeding it wrong) and I did 60g bread flour and 60g water.

        • 4 weeks ago
          Anonymous

          You should be fine. Ultimately, it doesn't make a huge difference. A bit of extra water just makes it slightly easier to get everything incorporated (I feed my starter partly with rye so the extra water helps since the rye sucks up water). Keep doing what you're doing and stay consistent. Even if you feel like you messed up, it's pretty idiot proof.

          • 4 weeks ago
            Anonymous

            Thanks

  53. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    No, my wife does the bread baking. I did make pizza tho. It's kinda like bread.

  54. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    making some cinnamon raisin swirl loafs right now

  55. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    I'm too lazy to deal with yeast and shit

    • 4 weeks ago
      Anonymous

      Sure sure but enough about women and their lack of hygiene, have you baked any bread?

  56. 4 weeks ago
    Anonymous

    Sure did

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