Home baked Bread

[Handyman]

It's raining , the dog is sleeping and it's winter...

What better of a day to make some bread.. right ?

I have made bread two other times that wasn't failures, but texture wasn't what I was trying to achieve.

I am using bread flour and allowing it to rise like I should, ect...

HOWEVER... the bread has a consistency / texture of an english muffin. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] Great for breakfast, 2 slices and your set until lunch.. LOL [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]

When I was a boy, my grand father baked bread and his was the best !!! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
It had the hard crust and the inside was a soft chewy bread, kind of a mixture of regular bread and a soft sour dough bread. where I have only been able to produce more of a cake type bread, sigh [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

I've heard of letting bread rise over night before baking..

any idea's..?

[Chuck52]

Find a good recipe and knead the heck out of the dough. The kneading develops the gluten and gives you that nice chewy texture. As to the hard crust, I can't say I've done much good with that. My favorite recipe is an oatmeal bread, and it has a fairly soft crust. Makes great sandwiches, though.

Chuck

[Handyman]

Thanks Chuck... your crispy crust is done by coating the bread with butter while baking.. also gives it the golden brown effect too

[Chuck52]

I've seen recipes for "french bread" that called for spraying the loafs with water during the baking to produce a hard crust. Never tried it, though. I did make a jalapeno cheese loaf that came out with a nice crust that called for an egg wash during the last part of the baking. Beautiful loaf, but it didn't taste all that good.

Chuck

[rozett]

I keep a small spray bottle of water on top fo the range for just such occaisions. Just before I put the dough in the oven, I spray the dough. But then I open the oven and spray the oven heavily. What you want is a lot of steam in the oven. This will harden up the crust for you. I do this two more times, about 5 minues after putting the dough in and then 5 minutes later. The production bakeries have steam injection ovens to do this automatically.

[Handyman]

Very interesting indeed.

What do you recommend to make the dough lighter .. fluffier ?

[rozett]

I would try a couple of things.... one at a time.

First, I'd reduce the flour by a few tablespoons. You might have to use a touch less liquid too.

Second, I would over-proof the dough.... let it rise longer than the recipe called for.

Also, I highly recommend the King Arthur (flour) Baking Circle. Link It is a good place to get this kind of assistance.

[Fishman]

I use a bread machine and it always comes out really good.

Good ones can be had for under $50.

Takes the savings (if any) out of the picture, but yum.

[donh]

My CFO uses a bread machine, also, and has very few failures. She goes to a lot of meetings where people contribute a dish, and they always ask her, "Bring your bread!" The biggest problem is when there is a power failure during the process. The bread machine forgets where it was during the cycle and it's nearly impossible to recover. I've though about hooking up a UPS battery backup from the computer, but it would only be effective during the "waiting" and "kneading" cycles -- I think when the machine is baking, it used too many watts for the UPS to work, unless I use a ridiculously big (and expensive) UPS. Fortunately, our power company, Florida Power & Light, has improved since the days when it was know as "Florida Flicker and Flash."

[Bird]

I used to have a recipe for sourdough bread that I got from Alaska magazine (formerly The Alaskan Sportsman if I remember right) and I really liked it. But now we're on our second bread machine and never seem to get the texture we want with any of the recipes we've tried. We want a light, fluffy texture, so if anyone has a good recipe for the bread machine, I'd appreciate it.