February 04, 2005

• Turn the heat down and bake it longer. Use more liquid. Add some kind of nuts (pecans, walnuts, etc.). I have only been baking bread for the past couple of years, but I have found it the easiest thing in the world to get right. I have noticed, though that a good oven makes better bread.
• i once loved a girl who loved the bread. i decided i needed to make the bread. 6 loaves before i got one that was edible. mostly it's just practice. stick with one recepie untill you have it nailed, and measure like someones life depended one it.
• Cookwise has a lot of great bits on the hows-and-whys of baking bread. Highly recommended.
• Don't always follow the recipe to a tee. Try holding back some flour or adding more liquid. Flour can vary widely in moisture content, and the weather can have an effect as well, so some days you need a little more flour, and other days not as much. You learn to judge when the dough is the proper consistency. Pick one recipe, preferably a simple one like white bread, and work on it until you get it the way you want it. That way you can better see how the changes you make affect the final product. I love the book "Baking with Julia" because there are plenty of pictures and some really basic information. Also, butter in bread doesn't always have the effect you expect. It can make the bread go stale really quickly, for example. If you think about it, with that much butter you were almost making biscuit dough, rather than bread dough.
• Maybe you're using too much flour when you knead? you said "moist"
• You absolutely must, and I mean this, get I'm Just Here for More Food (Food X Mixing + Heat = Baking) by Alton Brown. Seriously. It's baking, but instead of just recipes, he goes and tells you about the various methods (Muffin Method, Creaming Method, Straight Dough Method, etc), and what they really mean, why they work, and some examples of how to use it. Also, it includes how to recognize that a quick-bread is a muffin and not a bread, so you shouldn't try to make it like one. A cheese cake isn't a cake, it's a custard pie. That sort of thing. Why the texture of a muffin is different from a cookie (because creaming sugar with butter creates air bubbles of a fine texture, whereas with muffins you get the rising from chemical leavening in up to two stages). So, yeah, go read it. And I resent the implications that I'm in a cult.
• i once loved a girl who loved the bread. i decided i needed to make the bread. And they say romance is dead.
• Agreed on the kneading too much comment - also, when you bake either spray the sides of the oven with water before you put the bread in (and once during cooking), or put a small dish of water in with the bread.
• Remember, although cooking is an art, baking is a science. Follow directions and measure properly. And if you don't trust your oven's thermostat, get an oven thermometer and calibrate it properly.
• And you should weigh your ingredients rather than using volume measure.
• I second the Alton Brown recommendation - he's a cooking guru.
• I find in most cases, bread recipes call for too much kneading. I generally knead just until the dough becomes elastic and then STOP. I've seen recipes that call for ten minutes of kneading! Also, when kneading, keep the dough very moist- almost wet and sticky, with dry flour on the outside just barely keeping it from sticking. This is the trickiest thing about bread making IMO, and not all that tricky actually.
• King Arthur's Flour has some great recipes and the Baking Circle chat board, where you can undoubtedly get advice (registration required for the board, but not the recipes.) Have you tried a potato bread? Potatoes add and keep moisture in the dough. There's a great recipe in James Beard's "Beard on Bread." It makes a huge loaf, but will keep for a long time and not dry out - even keeps in the fridge, which is usually a bread no-no - and almost fool-proof. I couldn't find a copy of it on the internet, but if you plead beautifully, I might type it up and send it to you or post it here. I'd agree that butter isn't a moistening ingredient in bread, and that you may be kneading in too much flour. The dough needs to feel "alive" when you put it in to rise - supple and moist but not sticky. Some types of bread even need to be a bit sticky. And, as cabingirl said, the weather can have an effect on how much flour is needed, as does the age of the flour. Also, spraying water into the oven, putting in a pan of water, or brushing a bit of water onto the loaf has more to do with making a crisp crust than with the moistness of the crumb.
• Try adding an emulsifier or some glycerin.
• Make sure you're not overbaking. Get a good instant read thermometer and check the temp of the loaves when they get close to the end of baking. The desired final temp tends to be between 190 & 205 F, depending on the recipe.
• The other way to tell if a loaf is done is to tap it on the bottom. If it sounds hollow, it's done.
• Using honey in place of all or some of the sugar in a recipe can help baked items remain moist.
• Aah, bread-baking. A subject dear to my heart. I struggled for a long time trying to get a proper rustic loaf. After years, I've finally gotten close. You should absolutely get either Crust and Crumb or The Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. Next down the list would be Artisan Baking Across America. Get at least one from your library. As you can see, I'm all about the rustic/artisan type loaf (no sugar!). For that kind of bread it's common to use less yeast and a longer rise. There's also the whole pre-ferment thing, which those books explain. If you're content with a more typical sandwich loaf you don't need to go all out, but you might as well if you're baking your own. The main thing to know is that you probably don't need as much yeast as you think. And you definitely don't need as much flour as you'd imagine. As I recently discovered, if your dough sticks to your work surface you should use a scraper to get it off - do not add more flour. I'm guessing you added a bunch more flour because the dough seemed too sticky. I'll stop hogging the thread. But email me if you'd like.
• Ok, too much flour and too much kneading. I thought kneading was like mixing, only it was too thick to use a spoon so you use your hands. I didn't know that it was all so complicated. I will try less flour and less kneading, and some honey instead of sugar, and I'll find a recipe without butter, and I'll put some water in the oven and I'll watch it like a hawk when it is almost done. And my next attempt will probably take place at my gf's house, where her oven is nice and new and convection (whatever that means), unlike mine which is kind of crappy, and maybe that will help too. Thank you for all the advice!
• I forgot to recommend a couple of spoonfuls of rolled oats. They soak up the liquid and don't let it out again.
• I second Beeswacky's comment about honey. Honey is hydrophillic - it naturally contains less water than the atmosphere, and so will attract and absorb moisture. Plus, even the dryest bread is tasty tosted!
• It may cook faster in a convection oven. Be vigilant!
• "Plus, even the dryest bread is tasty tosted!" And would make good breadcrumbs (blenderized or in a food processor) or, de-crusted, cut into rectangles and toasted a bit in a slow oven, croutons for stuffing.
• Kneading is like mixing, but even more important, it develops the gluten in the flour, so you do need to knead longer than you would just mix. When I first was successful enough with the potato bread that I felt confident to go on (back in the 70s) the theory was that lots of kneading was necessary - it gives a denser loaf and smaller crumb. More recent recipies, going for the rustic bread texture, call for less kneading and slower rises, so you get more air bubbles in the finished product. All depends on your taste. Can you tell I love bread?
• FWIW, here`s a recipe I created for soybean bread. There was no recipes for soybean bread, and now I`ve noticed there are quite a few on the internet. I fallen out of the bread making, and I`m not sure if this is the original recipe I sent them, although it appears to be. On first note I see the ingredients listed is one cup of flour, and then later it calls for another cup(which is probably the correct amount) The chopped soybeans give this bread a "soft crunch", and it is delicious. http://bread.allrecipes.com/az/nclBbsSybnBrd.asp
• disregard that flour statement---
• This weekend's loaf turned out great. Thanks for all the good advice.