For the bakers amongst us!

Those loaves look phenomenal. :cool1

 

My first sweet cheese buns The smell is just terrific.

 

You might need to end me the recipe for those! Nice!

 

I love bread, and can't imagine a life without it. One of my pet peeves in restaurants is getting either too hot or too cold bread with butter just taken out of the fridge.
We make fresh bread for every lunch an dinner and it gives me a smile every time I eat a slight warm bread with room temperature salted butter.
I have attempted to take some pictures of the process


We start with a poolish fermented from the day before and make the dough . After it's risen it punched down and we let it rise again. Sorry no pics here...

Then weighing



Rolling



Any extra dough will be converted to flatbread






Back to the original bread, let it proof on trays dusted with semolina

Score



Bake 225-230 c (add a ladle of water to create the steam)



And voila

 

Last picture ment to be after it's proofed , couldn't edit from tapatalk

 

My restaurant won't let me make the bread... but we get it for little. We are finally switching from what I believe is the worst house bread ever but I don't get to make it. :/

 

They're still hot







Now I can see how big difference is when you have a baking stone. After many coversations and recommendations from Bieniek I went to tile shop and I got granit tile. The first one cracked but it was small anyway. I bought second one and I stacked them together. Sorry for messy picture but it's after baking these loafs. While baking I keep smal glass bowl and I pour boiling water just a second before closing the oven.

 

I picked up a custom cut 1" thick ceramic stone. It was 22" x 16" Takes a bit to heat up, but boy is it nice!

 

my first lemon honey madeleines, I used Trehalose instead sugar & used 40% oliver oil/60% butter instead 100% butter. the result is quite nice...crispy outside & very fluffy inside!! reduced about 30% of sweetness & 25% of fat:

 

Those look a heckuva lot better than the stuff I see in plastic wrap at the local mega coffee chain.

 

The last time I tried to make drop biscuits

 

We sure do!

The first time I went out with Ron he invited me over for dinner, along with a couple we both know. Followed by a play at a small local theatre, then back to his house for dessert. At the end of the evening I though... hmmm... attractive, intelligent, likes theatre, great cook... this one's a keeper. 29 years later and he still can't get rid of me.

One of my biggest problems with bread is most recipes make too much. Two people can't eat all those loaves before it gets stale. I have started playing with one of the bread machines that makes just one one-pound loaf. Getting fairly good results using a now out of print book called Electric Bread. Still working on a good sour dough but other than that it is darn convenient to come home from work at 7:30 pm and have fresh bread with dinner.

 

Monkey bread.

 

last nights dessert a nice fruit tart with fresh pastry cream

 

Onion, Ham & Cheese Bread

 

I just came back from Germany and I just wanted to tell you that now I can see a difference in ovens. I baked a bread there and it was different experience.








When I was coming back from airport I bought Kenwood KM280 mixer mostly to knead a dough. Can you tell me how long should I mix it in the machine?

 

mixing time varies byt dough conditions. There is a point when the gluten develops enough that when you pick it up it will 'windowpane.' It will stretch and not tear. Depends on the type of dough and how chewy/dense you want it.

When the ratio of wets/dries is good the dough will also pull clean away from the bowl or nearly clean. It might also 'climb the hook.' Just play with it. If you know what your dough looks/feels like when you hand knead it or use another mixer you will know when you get to it on your new mixer.

 

Ok thanks. I tried today to use mixer for the first time and I thought that it will be ''ball'' of dough after that. It wasn't. It was quite loose so I took it out and fold it as ussual. It wasn't bad as for the first time. I will be experimenting. Thank again.

 

Yeah man all depends on many variables like is your flour fresh or oxidized what time of year it is, hence the temperature and humidity in your kitchen.
If you have a bread type of flour with protein content oscilating around 11-12% and you know how to deal with it, you could be doing the sourdough route, Im using autolyse here, or the yeast route where I would not waste my time on it. Yeasty dough is by nature more pliable and lighter, therefore you could use more water in it, for the sourdough I personally wouldnt.
For the sourdough alone I use max 60-65% water, whereas for yeast alone I could go as far as 75%, depending what Im doing, for regular shaping however, lets say baguette, just go a tad under 70.

Now the mixing for sourdough involves a little maths, cause you first want to mix your water and flour alone, just the have it blended. Use cald water, using machine, youre always better off with cald water, friction later on will warm up the dough, possibly to a point where before the first folding you will have to put it in the fridge.
These are not the best machine for the job you see, but It can be done.
But to the maths, you know already that whats mixed in the bowl for autolyse are your flour and water - your starter. That is why you should be exact with your starter proportions. I use the simplest one ie 100/100 equal amounts of water and flour, so simply if you start with

750 grams flour
500 grams water

I would mix 150 g of both with my sourdough starter and leave it to ferment.
Then the next day for the autolyse Id take the rest of both so 350g water and 600 g and mix it swiftly til its a random mass. Let it sit for a half an hour or something, noone yet explained how it works so you have to check yourself what works for you, in your kitchen.

NOW
This is only so simple for plain breads. If you wish to add nuts,corn, seeds, then for the best flavour you should soak your seeds overnight or for some time but use warm water.
If you have it hot in the summer, you would want to salt your water with 1.8 procent solution just to stop bacteria growth in your seeds water mixture. [dried seeds plus water equals life hehe] That salt needs to be remembered and if used, should be taken off of the amount youre adding into the dough.

Then you have to find out how much water are your seeds drinking. This is simple enough weigh them before soaking and after, the result water has to be eliminated from the basic bread recipe, or you risk ending up with a cake mixture rather than bread dough.
Always add the seeds last minute and mix gently just to get them incorporated, I actually do that by hand, trather than in the machine cause sharp edges in your seeds cut through gluten net. Simple as that. The you miss the tension or the bread might be heavy.

So back to the mixing itself, lets say youre after the autolyse, youve added the salt and starter, I would say youre safe with doing 10 minutes, BUT please remember only you are in your kitchen in front of your machine, dont go and take a shower cause recipe calls for 10 minute kneading.
I always check the dough after 5 minutes, and for the type of flour I use it nearly shows no signs of gluten net development.
Then I give it 5 more minutes, but am checking temperature regularly. Ideally you want your dough out of kneading stage at about 24.5 celsius, so if the machine needs 15 minutes of mixing, just use colder water

Speed? Half way between null and full. This my friend is your job. Every machine and hook is different, works differently.

Something missing?
Oh yeah keep the temp in your kitchen low, or have the dough in the fridge before the first folding, and some minutes after the second folding.

The results are just a matter of time if you pay attention

 

Mike any advice on how to incorporate grains that have used for brew Into the bread ? We have our first brew at work and I have to start utilising some of the grains , for now we are only doing simple lean dough breads with poolish starter