Bread

[Janne]

Anybody likes baking?
We do. For flavour, also because what we can buy here is not to our taste or goodness requirements.

Wife is very good on French style white bread, personally I like to do darker versions, of various grain sorts.

After I had my first cup of coffee, I will start a batch.
This time I plan to use 1/3 unbleached white wheat, 1/3 rye and 1/3 barley. Wheat and barley of the less healthy non whole meal versions. Rye flour is wholemeal.

Salt, crushed caraway seeds and a litte bit of powderised rosemary. A small pinch of sugar to start up the little yeast beasties.

I will use water and kefir mix 50/50 as liquid, make the dough fairly runny. Use only half of recommrnded yeast amount, a trick my mom tought me.
Let slow ferment in the wine room for 24 hours or so, and bake out tomorrow.

First slice will be Butter and Clover honey from Norway....
Second one Pork drippings, salt and thinly sliced onion.

 

[santaman2000]

I have baked loaf type breads in the past. Generally it was too time consuming for my preferences. The local supermarkets (the larger ones anyway) have their own bakeries making fresh bread every day so I don't have to get the mass produced stuff. (that might change now that my daughter's celiac)

I still bake biscuits reasonably regularly though. As well as cornbread and various desserts.

 

[Robson Valley]

I've made my own bread for many years. Nothing fancy, just the taste I want.
Got into the habit of doing that on Friday after work.
Sort of put the stops on all the crap that happened for a week.

Kneading the dough is a Zen thing, I don't know where my head goes until the gluten pushes back.
I bake other bready things but never anything as consistent as my weekly bread.

 

[santaman2000]

I think that "weekly" schedule was normal for bread (other than quick breads) back in the 19th and 20th centuries. My uncles used to talk about how good the baking smelled when walking past the Italian neighborhood on "bread day."

 

[bigboned]

Anybody likes baking?

Let slow ferment in the wine room for 24 hours or so, and bake out tomorrow.

First slice will be Butter and Clover honey from Norway....
Second one Pork drippings, salt and thinly sliced onion.

I’m sorry but we seem to have skipped past ‘the wine room’ now tell us more? Oh and also the day 2 pork drippings deserves a mention!

I think we are talking pictures here as my mind is already controlling my taste buds just by the mention of baking!

 

[Robson Valley]

There's been what? 12,000 years of experiments making breads? All surprisingly good.
Bertinet and Gisslen are 2 serious textbooks worth owning.

I'll make fougasse and focaccia with herbs, bread stars, some baguettes stuffed with cheese & green onion,
but the weekly bread has become such a ritual, makes me smile to think about it.

My joke is that my cupboards are no warmer than 12C in the winter so I have to remember to get all the flours out
and up on the kitchen counter the night before. The "yeastie-beasties" really want to swim in 25C dough.

 

[snappingturtle]

There's a flat-ish bread I do, show to me by an Irish friend its just self raising, milk and sugar rolled flat and quite dry takes about 20min's in the oven to do its thing.

 

[oldtimer]

For many years I have made our daily bread when we are in England but we buy from our local artisan baker in France. This is because I cheat by using a bread maker, which we don't have in France. But even with the cheat I like the way I can vary the mix of flours and grains. I do know how to make proper bread from scratch and do so sometimes.

My grandmother would have considered buying bread a strange thing to do and the sight of bread rising in its bowl by her hearth is a happy childhood memory.

When we lived in the Bahamas, shop bread meant American wrapped, sliced pap so my wife used to make ours. She used to leave the dough to rise in the sun on the bonnet of the car (hood of the automobile for our American friends). One a feral dog from the bush took the opportunity to grab a quick meal and swallowed the lot. She's worried ever since about how the poor pooch managed when its meal doubled inside its inside.

 

[Janne]

I’m sorry but we seem to have skipped past ‘the wine room’ now tell us more? Oh and also the day 2 pork drippings deserves a mention!

I think we are talking pictures here as my mind is already controlling my taste buds just by the mention of baking!

Sorry, I am unable to take pics.
Wine room?
When I originally designed our house when we lived in UK, I designed it with a large walk in ‘wet room’ just ike we have in Sweden. It is a large cupboard / small room, where you put your nasty wet and dirty jackets, hats, welkes and shoes, with a water resistant floor and airy hanging and storage space.
Never built the house in UK as we moved to the Carribean, but as the design was done, we had it adopted to the weather and earthquake standard.
But I forgot that we do not need a wetroom, so I converted it to a wine room. 4 inch expanded cork insulation, a special AC, wood panneling, wine shelves and racks.
In fact my son’s idea to do it.

Pork drippings? When I buy pork for a roast, I buy a piece that is well marbled and has a decent layer of fat under the skin.
We cook it the Germanic / Bihemisn style, salt, caraway seeds and then slow roasted for hours.
The drippings/ fat is delicious on bread.
Maybe not the healthiest stuff in this world, but then maybe we do a pork roast once every two months or so.

If you roast a goise, the goise fat/drippings are super too on bread.

The drippings we use as long as it lasts in cooking too.

 

[Hammock_man]

Is there such a thing as "Bad" home made bread. Even then its not wonderful it can still be used as a training day!

 

[Robson Valley]

Yeah, when I forget the buns are in the oven!
Just hot enough for them to dry to "crispy" for an extra hour or two.
I give that monolith to the egg people/farmers when they come by.

Sometimes, I cut off and save the end crusts from my bread and other baking disasters.
Lots of snow and/or cold (-20C) and I shovel a track in my front yard so I can feed the local conspiracy of Ravens.

The Ravens come into the village when there's a lot of snow = they can't
get at the usual road kill until the cats or the wolves & coyotes dig it all out again.

 

[Janne]

In proper cooking we make misstakes....

That is what I tell wife when I fail

Overly dried bread? Crush into breadcrumbs!

 

[santaman2000]

.....Overly dried bread? Crush into breadcrumbs!

Or just toast it for breakfast. Or even make French Toast.

 

[Janne]

If you can slice it..

Dough has been rising nicely now since this morning, and I placed it in the cold where it will be overnight.

 

[Janne]

I have never baked any cakes or sweet breads.

 

[Rich D]

I have never baked any cakes or sweet breads.

Had garlic and rosemary fougasses yesterday in what was a mixed day for bread. My first sour dough starter that id been feeding all week to use on Saturday split and died on me on Saturday morning, which is why I went for easy and quick fougasse.

 

[Fraxinus]

My first attempt at baking bread was a disaster, I was house sitting and fell asleep and was awoken by the smoke alarm, it was baked,toasted and cremated all in one oven.
Later attempts have worked out well and I enjoy the whole process, my favourite has olives (Cretan or Kalamata) and home made sun dried tomatoes chopped up in the mix.
Rob.

 

[mousey]

I do bake bread occasionally, mostly I just make pizza bases for the kids to shape and decorate to their liking before baking, home made pizza night is a good hit with the kids. However I have not baked bread while out camping yet - it is something I've been meaning to do.

 

[fenix]

I bake a loaf most weekends, nice and cold in the garage so I leave it overnight to proof in there. I tend to do the mixing using an old stand mixer, then knead by hand after the first proof. Seems to work ok so far. Hopefully progress on to sourdough at some point, was eying up a one day course but its booked up.

 

[peaks]

@fenix
The courses that they run in this bakery might be of interest? http://www.theloaf.co.uk/