Too Much Coffee

Now all we need is some home-churned butter, slightly salted. I'm very hungry for all I have seen now

Bruce is right, not enough yeast used and it looks like the oven may not have been hot enough for the first ten minutes. Use steam in the first ten minutes of baking by spraying water on to the sides of the oven or by pouring a cup of water on to the oven tray that you put on the bottom of the oven.
Never mind the ready bought yeast, start a batch of sourdough starter as soon as possible, even if you don't use it right away.
It takes about a month to six weeks to get a good batch of sourdough starter
going and then you'll never look back..... regular yeast is tasteless compared to natural yeast in a starter.....
Looks like you have the right stone, here is my latest batch of 11 sourdough breads, baked this past weekend....

Tom,
As always, Zapty is the expert (and appears to have given up roasting coffee for baking bread!).

I certainly agree that "homegrown" sourdough is superior to baker's yeast. It does take some time to get going and there's no guarantee that it will work the first time, however, so for starters it's fine to use yeast. Although I don't have any evidence that it's better I prefer fresh yeast to freeze dried yeast. You can get 30g blocks of fresh yeast in most grocery stores and you just use the whole block for 1kg of flour. There's no need to measure or weigh it. The same is true with freeze dried yeast. It comes in 7g sachets and you just use 3 of them per kg flour.

If your kitchen isn't particularly warm you can wake the yeast up by stirring it into warm water with a teaspoon of sugar and letting it sit there for 5 minutes. That will guarantee that the yeast is activated, whether fresh or freeze dried.

I generally make bread on a big board or counter top. I just pour out the flour onto the board, make a well in the middle, add bit of water, sugar and yeast, stir a bit and after a few minutes I add the rest of the warm water and slowly begin pulling the flower into the middle making sure not to break the outer wall of flour so the water stays in the middle. I use a fork to do that until the dough gets thickened and all the water is taken up by the flour. Then I flour my hands and use them to scoop all the dough together and begin kneading. You can use a bowl, of course, but I like to do it on the board. The whole process is really fun and somehow quite therapeutic.

Turn your oven up to full whack, 250°C or as high as it goes and make sure it's reached temperature before you put the bread in. Soak your stone in warm water for half an hour before putting it in the oven. That's very important, btw. Spraying water in for the first 10 minutes, as Zapty suggests, also assures getting a nice, crispy crust.

Good luck and have fun. On almost every DVD he has made Jamie Oliver demonstrates the above. It is always fun (for me) to watch him and his enthusiasm is infectious.

Hi guys,

Zapty: how did you know that the oven wasn't up to temp for the first 10min? I use a tray inside the oven into which I pour water. Seems to do the trick as the crust was really lovely.

Bruce: thanks for the tips, I do most of the things the same, except for kneading which I read isn't necessary. I also read that some people do it, some not and that results vary. Regarding yeast I could get fresh yeast in Poland without any problems, here it's quite hard to get, everything is 'instant' or 'freeze dried'.

Anyway I've got some dough in the fridge which actually got bigger as I used more yeast. Will see how it does in the oven today.

Regards,
dsc.

You don't have to knead the dough, but then you get quite a different product than you do if you do knead it. Try both ways and see what you like best.

Morrison's Supermarkets sell fresh yeast or you can ask at a baker's shop. It may not be worth the effort, but I sort of wish you would try it compared to freeze-dried yeast.

Hi guys,

Bruce I will try both kneading and fresh yeast, I'm curious what the results are going to be.

Here's a couple of photos from my last batch:



First one from the new batch. It was good but I found a few strange places where the dough created a few lumpy spots:



The other one didn't have this problem:



Could this be due to waiting before it's cool enough to cut? I was less patient with the first one.

Regards,
dsc.

dsc,My wife would call that "döhävet". Try pronouncing that
The bread looks lovely otherwise though. You probably know by now if it was only because you cut it too soon: many breads need their rest before cutting them. If it wasn't and you got parts/blobs of un-raised dough, you may have used old yeast or maybe you heated the yeast up too much when mixing it in - or perhaps it wasn't mixed into the dough good enough.
It's a lot like the "channelling ghost" of espresso; can be difficult to analyze and harder to root out.
I don't like the taste of those parts, maybe some others here do, but for me - no thanks. Tastes of yeast, and feels like chewing half-dry dough.
It looks like it was just a little, though. A little is usually fine, you can cut it off if it is too much to eat.

P.S. I am off bread and other carbs since... what is it, over a year now? So I haven't baked any for a long time. I do miss those sourdough breads... can smell them as I see those pictures. Thanks for sharing people, especially Zapty Zourdough! D.S.

P.P.S I have never used a baking stone. Is it really that good? D.D.S.

Hi zix,

I can try:) dyyuheyvet?:)

I think those gummy places were cause by not being patient enough, although I will have to check more breads and see if that's true. The insides of those two breads were a bit gummy to be honest and now I'm trying to do something about that. I'd also like to get a bit more holes and make them a bit bigger.

I've never not used a baking stone so I dunno if it's that good:) although I have to say it probably would be impossible to get crust like that without it.

Regards,
dsc.

Hi guys,

I've made a few breads now and recently I've been getting very hard crust on all of my loafs. I'm using fresh yeast now and the recipe is something like this:

- 500g bread flour
- 24g fresh yeast
- 12g salt
- 280ml water

I think the water-flour ratio is a bit too low and that might be the main cause of the hard crust. Other than that perhaps too high temperature (220*C)?

Regards,
Tom

Yes that is a bit dry dsc. Hydration rate - water divided by flour so 280/500 = 56% hydration. At the other end of the scale is King of Glops Ciabatta http://preview.tinyurl.com/lywc6b at 850/1000 which is obviously 85% hydration, which is way too wet for me to handle.
My fave ratio is 498water / 675flour = 71% which handles great and you don't get flour glued to your hands. The crust is faurly soft too and it helps if you put a pan with 0.5 litre of boiling water into the oven also.
I was in Morrisons supermarket yesterday and these days their bread varieties are much more adventurous than in the past. They had a 0.8 kg loaf called 'Tiger Bread.' I didn't buy any but the crust did indeed look like tiger skin pattern. I must google and see if I can find a recipe.

Hi all,

So a flatmate of mine has just come home with a breadmaker - she has no manual for it, and I'm not sure how she'll manage. (She is organized, and cooks from recipes usually. Unlike me - i like to make something up, it usually works).

But I realized - the following:

- I really like sourdough bread
- My girlfriend really likes sourdough bread
- There were some clever people on TMC discussing making it a while ago
- It sounds like it suits my style of cooking...

My question is -

Should I set about making my own starter culture, from scratch, or should i try to find someone local with one that's working well? (Or failing that, buy one ).

Next question -

Are any of you breadmaking TMCers in Oxfordshire (/Bucks/Berks)? (Probably a bit much to hope for).

Make your own, usually your own local strain of yeast (airborne) will work the best and give the best results. Over time any yeast strain that is not a local one will eventually be over taken by the local strain (that is in the air) anyhow......
There are different yeast strains all over the world but the local ones will always prevail, they are stronger than any imports and will take over ....

Make almost all my own bread and its pretty easy once you are in the swing of things. Dont do much pure sour dough at the moment as it takes a lot of time to put one together (roughly 24 hours start to finish) and I am too lazy to get better organised.

But I do use a mixture of rye sour dough and a little dried yeast for my standard loaves. Pretty much gave up on kneading by hand when the new food processor arrived but before then I found I could mix up the dough without kneading- leave it for a couple of hours and then it only takes about 3 minutes to knead rather than the 10 or more that is often quoted. Important when it comes to making bread around putting kids to bed and the usual evening routine.

Making a starter is all about controlling the fermentation (rotting...) of flour and water. The key is that yeast develops very quickly and likes to use up all the available food. The bacteria which make it sour tends to take longer to develop. It is completely magical the first time you make a loaf just using (effectively) flour water and salt and nothing else. The process for generating a starter is pretty straightforward and I can post a recipe or 2 if needed.

Best bread book - Andrew Whitley - Bread Matters. It was a course with him that really got me going and hes also very keen on cutting through all the mystique about doing it one way or another. I also like Making Bread at Home by Tom Jaine for the different recipes.

Going on a course with Richard Bertinet on Saturday so will be interesting to see what comes up

Oxford is my home city but I dont make it back there that often any more

I've tried making sourdough, but it's way too sour for my buds. The French method is supposed to be milder than American style. I have two Bertinet books, tried one of his SD's but still no joy.
How did the course go?

Hi guys,

I've yet to try my own sourdough, but currently I've got too much stuff on my head to actually do anything. I've also discovered that a 200g pack of fresh yeast I got two weeks ago went mouldy and I think I will have to throw most of it away.

Anyone has any suggestions on how to keep fresh yeast for longer and stop it from going mouldy?

Regards,
dsc.