Bread

[Robson Valley]

I was making pizza crust dough long before I decided that I wanted to learn how to make bread.
I had the bread formula which came with my Hamilton Beach stand mixer and that was all = no other help.
I even had to look up how to knead the dough!

Yes, I wasted some flour. Hindsight tells me that you will never know which questions to ask if
you allow somebody to lead you by the nose through the process. That's the "dogma" which sticks to your shoes.
Bertinet tends to be a bit that way. But, everything he suggests works really well when you have the time.

My bread formula is mine. Not out of a book or off the internet.
The result of exploration which gives me bragging rights.
Much to my delight, I can begin with the basic formula and derive all sorts of baked goods from it.

 

[snappingturtle]

Funny what sparks the memory, my brother was a dab hand at Navajo bread, we used to have it with crispy fryed fish, man that was good think I'll do some this week.

 

[Janne]

What is Navaho bread?
We had our first slices just.
Turned out well, but should have added a bit more caraway. I like that flavour.

 

[Robson Valley]

Are you thinking of "fry bread?" Every tribe on the continent has one.

 

[snappingturtle]

Are you thinking of "fry bread?" Every tribe on the continent has one.

Yep that's the stuff, I'll have to find a recipe as I don't recall the witchcraft of how he made it.

 

[Robson Valley]

Using the magnificent powers of my self-discipline, I have been able to avoid ever keeping a recipe for fry bread.
As I recall, the secret is in the mix of fats used for frying. Same again, everybody has one.

There's a Dene' woman sells fry bread with berries at the summer Community Market in my village. Two at the very most.

 

[Janne]

Fry bread sounds delicious but devastating for the waist line!

Tonight we will enjoy a cold schnitzel we cooked last night, with the bread, some mustard and maybe some German sourkraut, straight from the jar.

 

[Robson Valley]

You don't ever forget fry bread. Worse than the first time you get a batch of perfect baguettes
and there's softened butter on the counter..

I'm still stuck in the city doing post op recovery. All is going very well.
I have threatened to do some bready things to alleviate the boredom.

For the BCUK members who have never made bread:
You need a big bowl and a stick. 12,000 years of results has pretty much figured out what to do at the home-level.

Some of that and you overnight with your bannock recipe like it's magic.

 

[Janne]

They say that bread making evolved at the same time as beer making.
Some say bread and beer evolved from porridge.

I do not care which was first, as long as I have access to both!

 

[snappingturtle]

Hay guy's on the fry bread front could I use butter?

 

[Robson Valley]

Fry bread is sort of the Pow-Wow version of a doughnut. I don't know that adding butter would be a waste of fry bread.
I never ask how it's made. A little respect for the soul and magic that goes into it.

The fun part over the millennia must have been the experiments with wild yeasts and their subsequent cultivation.
Same as all the yeast varietals used in the beer/cheese/wine businesses.
You can still do this for home-made wines and home-made breads.
Keep those good cultures going for many years.

I start my yeast in warm water with a little brown sugar. A couple of tbsp butter has been melted.
I've measured that flour and added a little salt.
The salt and the butter control the gluten chain length for "crumb."
Mix the wet. Mix the dry. Mix them together. Knead the dough to develop the gluten.
Allow to double in size. Reduce, knead and scale into loaves. Rise again. Bake.
That's all I do.

 

[Janne]

I use olive oil. I guess any fat will do.

 

[Robson Valley]

I'll just say that most of the fat to make fry bread is lard. Rendered pork fat = "Tenderflake" brand in western Canada.
Then there's some veg shortening ("Crisco") and then a couple of other simple things.
Close as I need to say.

 

[Janne]

Sounds weird, but I have never tried those fats.
Butter, olive oil, rapeseed oil. Sunflower oil.
Plus the home made fats, pig, goose and duck!

 

[santaman2000]

I'll just say that most of the fat to make fry bread is lard. Rendered pork fat = "Tenderflake" brand in western Canada.......

Close as I need to say.[/QUOTE]

Sounds weird, but I have never tried those fats.
Butter, olive oil, rapeseed oil. Sunflower oil.
Plus the home made fats, pig, goose and duck!

So you've never used lard (rendered pork fat) but you have made home made pig fat (lard)? LOL

 

[oldtimer]

Interesting reference to Navaho bread. We had this when visiting the Four Corners part of the South West US at a Native American festival.. It was billed as a traditional and unique authentic food.

In our corner of the South West of France, we have a traditional. authentic and unique food called Bunyette. Blowed if I can tell the difference between it and Navajo bread.

 

[Janne]

Close as I need to say.

So you've never used lard (rendered pork fat) but you have made home made pig fat (lard)? LOL[/QUOTE]

Sorry, quote looks weird.
I have never used pig fat/ lard or beef fat / shortening (?) you buy in a shop, but I have use own produced animal fats.
On bread, in cooking.
If I buy fat, I buy real butter, olive oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil. Toasted sesame oil.

 

[Janne]

Had to look up the Navaho Bread, and it seems the Navaho say they started making it in the 1860’s, so if that is true it is not an old tradition.

 

[Robson Valley]

Fry bread is made with wheat flour. All you have to do is follow the introduction and cultivation of wheat in the Americas. Done deal.
Like corn/maize for polenta in Italy = New World source so cannot predate discovery.
Lots of "traditions" get up and running since the 15th Century. Works fine for me.

 

[santaman2000]

Had to look up the Navaho Bread, and it seems the Navaho say they started making it in the 1860’s, so if that is true it is not an old tradition.

If it's made from wheat flour it could not be a very old tradition. Wheat was introduced by European settlers. Corn was the king of grains in the New World in pre-Columbian times. Likewise for Navajo wool (no domesticated sheep before European colonization)

Edit to add: You beat me to it RV!