Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Cooking, Storing and Preserving => Topic started by: Annen on April 28, 2014, 14:44
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Does anybody know why we should use strong flour for bread making? And what happens if you use ordinary plain flour? Does it still make a decent loaf?
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My friend who is on benefits uses plain flour as she said she can't afford the proper stuff. He bread isnt bad, but not actually sure why we are supposed to only use strong bread flour.
I occasionally top up with plain if I'm short of the other stuff!
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You will get a much better loaf with strong flour - it will give a tougher, stronger dough that will hold the gas better, and give you a better rise, and a loaf with a higher volume.
Ordinary "plain" flour is a weak flour and is best for cakes and pastry.
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'strong' flour has a higher Gluten content. Gluten is the stuff that makes dough sticky and hold the air bubbles the yeast puts in, you get a better rise with gluten rich flours, ones with less give you a dense heavy loaf.
Now you could probably use plain flour (Americans don't really grade their flours as such and use one type for most everything) if you do a tiny pinch of vitamin c powder will help it rise (as it does with wholemeal flour).
I have been experimenting recently to get a good white bread that rises well and stays soft for more than a day, and the trick here is to have extra oil and milk powder (I use 2 tablespoons of milk powder in 330Ml water and 5 table spoons of oil) and my bread now stays soft for several days (I had some bread baked Friday for lunch today and it was getting to the same point as I had been the day after the loaf was made before my experiments).
so give it a go and try it at worst you will get a heavy loaf that doesn't rise well, make sure your dough isn't too dry as that wont help, it needs to be quite sticky, and don't add too much flour stopping it sticking, a drop of oil on the kneading surface and your hands helps there too.
Grendel
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Strong flour is used for bread as it has a high protein (gluten) content and makes the dough an hence the crumb of the bread more elastic. Bread made with ordinary flour would be more cakey in texture.
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Over here most shops sell All Purpose flour which can be used for breads as well as pastry but the loaves don't rise quite as nicely as strong/bread flour will do, as grannie says. The only flour you really want to avoid is stated cake and pastry flour; it truly makes dud loaves.
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My father-in-law was an artisan bread baker and he maintained that Canadian bread flour was the best in the world :D
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I use plain flour, instant/active yeast (whatever the latest visitor has brought over from the UK!), salt and water to a recipe in "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes" (British edition). If you're interested, have a look at the website artisanbreadinfive.com
They are very careful not to give recipes away on the website but have lots of posts on techniques for different types of bread. If you're interested in trying their approach, get the latest American edition of their book (The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day) rather than my edition, as it contains a lot more dough recipes. Plus it gives ingredients in weights rather than just cups (cups only in their earlier American edition). I've tried a few of their recipes (olive oil bread, buttermilk bread as well as their 'master recipe' for ordinary white bread) and they've all turned out well. Their enriched doughs look fantastic, but contain too much butter and too many egg yolks for my OH, so I haven't tried those.
If you count input time (rather than proving time), you can make bread in two minutes a day. No kneading involved, which is great if you've got arthritis.
I did not believe the method would work but it does. I even use the same technique for Lidl bread mixes (just add an extra 50 ml or so of water). We get good loaves, although it should be said that I'm comparing my bread with bread locally available (minimarkets and bakeries), which is not great.
On the website, they talk about six-quart containers, which is the equivalent of six litres not twelve pints. You can halve the recipes very easily, so you wouldn't need to use such a large container. I use a squat square job rather than the tall cylinder they use, as it fits in my fridge better. In fact, I often have two lots of dough on the go, like today: one for brown loaves (Lidl mix) and one master recipe for rolls, naans and pizza bases. Our Italian neighbour can't believe I manage to make such good pizzas, and it's all down to the dough.
Edited to add this: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2013/11/01/english-muffins-on-the-stove-top-with-gold-medal-flour-and-red-star-yeast#more-6412
This page gives a recipe (in cups) for the master recipe and a link. Essentially, mix water, salt and yeast and then mix in the flour (I use an ordinary tablespoon), leave to rise for two hours and then bung in fridge for a while, as the dough is much easier to handle when it's cold. Check their site for what they call their 'cloaking' technique if I recall rightly. This is quite important and worth seeing them do. Despite the term, it is not some kind of Star-Trek advanced technology but dead easy once you have the idea. Washing-up is a doddle in comparison with traditional breadmaking. I have to say, they have a bit of a nerve using the word 'artisan', but the result is good.
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(I use 2 tablespoons of milk powder in 330Ml water and 5 table spoons of oil)
That's interesting Grendel, when you say 5 tablespoon of oil, to how much flour is that? its a lot more than I would normally use.
Snoop, thanks for that link, I can hardly believe it is that easy, and I have got arthritis! I will give that a go, the one on the video done in the crockpot look interesting.
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thats to 3 cups of flour, its a lot more than I used to use, I used to put 2 tablespoons of oil, I have to admit I built up to that one extra spoon at a time, and the bread stays soft a lot longer now, its all about trying it and changing just one thing at a time.
Grendel
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My father-in-law was an artisan bread baker and he maintained that Canadian bread flour was the best in the world :D
My late FIL was the managing master baker at a huge commercial bakery and they would get daily shipments of fresh flour. But he wouldn't let the bakers use it until it was about 2-3 days old. I forget the exact reason but it was something to do with very freshly ground flour not rising quite as well as slightly 'aged' flour. He left me his personal recipe book but sadly the volumes are huge, like 80 pounds of salt, 40 pounds of yeast, etc :D
In the interim, as I've read up on flours, apparently the bread flour of France is the ideal bread flour. The grain variety and the way it's ground is superior to even Canadian wheat. An artisan bakery near us used to import flour from France, but the prices got so high that customers couldn't afford to buy it so the bakery had to use local organic bread flour. Not exactly a hardship but it certainly reduced the haughty factor the shop wanted to maintain.
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I slice the bread and freeze part of the loaf - keeps fresh for ages that way, without extra fat, in fact without any fat. I don't ever remember putting fat in ordinary bread, just flour, salt, yeast and water. And seeds too, and fried onion is fatty I suppose, and so is cheese I guess...but no fat in plain bread :wub:
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I slice the bread and freeze part of the loaf - keeps fresh for ages that way, without extra fat, in fact without any fat. I don't ever remember putting fat in ordinary bread, just flour, salt, yeast and water. And seeds too, and fried onion is fatty I suppose, and so is cheese I guess...but no fat in plain bread :wub:
Fat? I use one or two table-spoons of olive oil depending on the type of loaf.
Strong white or strong brown flour 83p (or 89p) for 1.5kg from a local supermarket beginning with T. Ownbrand.
I use it every day - rarely buy bread these days.
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Snoop, thanks for that link, I can hardly believe it is that easy, and I have got arthritis! I will give that a go, the one on the video done in the crockpot look interesting.
I came across the website by chance and mentioned it to a friend. She got me the book for Christmas and I looked at it for weeks, convinced it would just be a waste of flour, but my OH loves this bread. The dough is quite soft when warm, which is why, I think, they concentrate on making loaves from no more than a 650 g of dough, though most of their recipes are for 450 g of dough. Which seems like not much, but it is so easy to make that you can bake every day if you have no qualms about putting the oven on. As we have a wood-burning range for heating in winter, it's no problem for me to bake every day. It sounds like a big deal, making bread every day, but I've even had spates of fresh rolls for lunch. Must have taken me all of three minutes to get the dough out of the fridge, prepare the surface and shape the rolls. When the weather gets warmer, I'll probably start using some of their pan-fried and grilled recipes (English muffins, naans and the like).
I'd much rather eat this bread than anything I can buy locally and it works out very cheap, especially with ordinary flour. They don't recommend cake flour but unbleached plain flour, which has a protein content of around 10%. Even the bags of flour here give protein values, so I imagine you should be able to identify this in the UK.
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I too pretty much bake bread every day - I do use a bread machine a lot of the time but my recipe is the same for hand kneaded as machine bread. yesterday I put a loaf on to bake when I was making my sandwiches, and had to put another loaf on last night as that loaf had been used during the day, so nice fresh bread this morning. When I have time I will bake by hand kneading and rising and cooking in the oven (mostly at weekends / bank holidays ) and I do a nice cheese topped roll too. here is my loaf from this morning (with the 5 tablespoons of rapeseed oil).
Grendel
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Just for background, my mum has made her own bread since I was small- every other day Her dad (my Granddad) was a Master Baker most of his life, so we too have a good background in baking.
Like Paul I use the supermarkets own brand flour (whatever bread flower is the cheapest on the day in whichever supermarket I happen to be in when I remember), I do still have to get my head around how to produce the 'tiger crust' bread from supermarkets (something to do with a wash of rice flour dough I recall).
Grendel
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Grendel that loaf looks good enough to eat! :D
What started this off was that for the first time in ages, I made a spelt loaf and it was okay-ish, but a bit cakey textured, so (a bit late) I checked the use-by dates and I had about 5 or 6 half bags of different bread flours, all past (well past) their best dates. It does seem to matter on flour, bread flour especially.
Which is why I was wondering if I could use plain flour, as I would use that up in other things.
It seems like the answer is yes, but not with such good results.
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A general purpose flour will still make a decent loaf but if you can get the hard bread flour you'll notice a difference. Spelt is a healthy grain to use but lacks gluten needed for rising so use it only as 10% of your total flour and the rest as regular wheat flour.
Flours do have basic 'sell by' dates of roughly 5 years, and that depends on the storage conditions. Once the wheat grain is ground up, the inner sections are now exposed and slowly go rancid over time with 5 years generally the maximum 'off' time. 1 or 2 year old flour should still be fine unless they were stored next to an oven or something that heated up regularly.
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A general purpose flour will still make a decent loaf but if you can get the hard bread flour you'll notice a difference. Spelt is a healthy grain to use but lacks gluten needed for rising so use it only as 10% of your total flour and the rest as regular wheat flour.
Flours do have basic 'sell by' dates of roughly 5 years, and that depends on the storage conditions. Once the wheat grain is ground up, the inner sections are now exposed and slowly go rancid over time with 5 years generally the maximum 'off' time. 1 or 2 year old flour should still be fine unless they were stored next to an oven or something that heated up regularly.
I wonder if that was why the spelt loaf was cakey, as I used all spelt not a mixture, perhaps the use-by date had nothing to do with it. >:( And I threw them all out! Thanks Trillium I'll give the spelt loaf another go as I like the flavour.
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I make quite a reasonable Spelt loaf using about 200g Spelt & 250g Strong White (Bread machine). I have put one on tonight and increased the oil level to see if that opens up the texture a bit, I will report back! I am much better at digesting Spelt so I likes to try.
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I make quite a reasonable Spelt loaf using about 200g Spelt & 250g Strong White (Bread machine). I have put one on tonight and increased the oil level to see if that opens up the texture a bit, I will report back! I am much better at digesting Spelt so I likes to try.
Let us know how it turns out!
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Haven't tried it myself but here's a recipe for spelt biscuits: biscuits (http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/spelt-biscuits-recipe)
and a slew of spelt bread recipes: here (http://www.breadexperience.com/spelt-bread.html)
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Very noice indeed. Still quite a dense crumb, but a nicer crust. Toasts very well which is all I want it for.
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Very noice indeed. Still quite a dense crumb, but a nicer crust. Toasts very well which is all I want it for.
I will try that. I wonder if adding a pinch of vitamin C powder, as Grendel suggests, would work with spelt flour too. I feel an experiment coming on...
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So. . .after reading all your admirable replies, anyone know why my 70% strong white and 30% wholemeal (no oil) always seems to be a tad heavy and breaks rather than bends? Tastes jolly good though.
Cheers, Tony.
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When you work with any whole wheat flour you need to add a bit extra liquid and when you knead it, be careful not to add too much extra flour to minimize stickiness. My w.w. doughs are somewhat sticky as I knead and they turn out perfectly. By doing so you leave in enough moisture for the bread to be more bendy.
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Just to report back...I tried the bread that Snoop talked about at www.artisanbreadinfive.com (http://chat.allotment-garden.org/www.artisanbreadinfive.com)
I made the dough using half amounts yesterday and set a shaped small amount to rise in the fridge overnight. It was very sticky and I couldn't get it into the nice shape which they do on the video, but I soldiered on... It didn't seem to rise much in the fridge but I put it in the oven this morning anyway. I am using a halogen oven. It was so soft the cuts in the top healed over instead of blooming. It looked okay, but had a very chewy crust, nice in the middle, quite open texture. I have some more dough left so I will try again because I think it will be useful especially if I don't need to light the main oven and wait for ages for it to come to temperature. I think next time I will let it sit for a while after it comes out the fridge, half hour might let it rise a bit more.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ONVHJm6D0wKEEaWTXxbCOP198xrElNw3wcQ4rfsATNwX=w299-h223-p-no)
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Just to report back...I tried the bread that Snoop talked about at www.artisanbreadinfive.com (http://chat.allotment-garden.org/www.artisanbreadinfive.com)
I made the dough using half amounts yesterday and set a shaped small amount to rise in the fridge overnight. It was very sticky and I couldn't get it into the nice shape which they do on the video, but I soldiered on... It didn't seem to rise much in the fridge but I put it in the oven this morning anyway. I am using a halogen oven. It was so soft the cuts in the top healed over instead of blooming. It looked okay, but had a very chewy crust, nice in the middle, quite open texture. I have some more dough left so I will try again because I think it will be useful especially if I don't need to light the main oven and wait for ages for it to come to temperature. I think next time I will let it sit for a while after it comes out the fridge, half hour might let it rise a bit more.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ONVHJm6D0wKEEaWTXxbCOP198xrElNw3wcQ4rfsATNwX=w299-h223-p-no)
Sorry, that's my fault for not giving full instructions it would seem. I thought they'd do that on their website and didn't look carefully enough.
Make the dough as detailed in my earlier message and leave it all to rise in its container for two hours. It will double in volume. Then put all the dough, still in its container, in the fridge, where it will probably sink a little bit. Don't close the lid of the container completely at any stage, just rest it on the top to allow any fermentation gases to escape. It's not worth trying to shape the dough immediately either before or after the two hours initial rise because, as you say, it's very sticky. This is why they recommend putting it in the fridge beforehand.
When you want to bake bread, take an amount of dough from the container (450 g is their recommended amount - a quarter of the full recipe) and quickly shape using what they call their 'cloak' technique. If you check this on the website, you should find some video demonstrations. Essentially, take the lump of dough in floured hands and roll edges and tuck in underneath for ten seconds or so (absolutely no kneading) till you have a smooth surface. If you want a freeform 'boule' loaf, that's it. If you want a tin loaf (450 g is about a pound to give you an idea of the tin size), you need to stretch your ball of dough a bit to fit your tin.
When you've done this, leave the loaf to rise again (they cover in cling film but I make loaves in a tin and plonk the tin in a carrier bag twisted at the top to close it for convenience). For loaves of 450 g and more using dough from the fridge (the maximum weight they mention is 650 g), leave to rise for an hour and a half before putting in the oven. For rolls, 30 minutes rising is enough. For pizzas and foccacias, I leave them to rise while I'm putting on the topping and then maybe another five minutes or so depending on how long it took me to do that. If you put boiling water in a container in the oven as well, you get a decent crust (I put a pyrex jug in, but they use a metal grill pan if I recall rightly, which probably gives a more even spread of steam, but I don't have shelves in my oven so I can't do that).
If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. The authors have had years of trying out their method and explaining it. This is my first time, so I will probably have missed things out. I highly recommend the new edition of their book (mentioned in my previous message) for a full explanation.
Apologies if the loaf didn't come out well. That was my fault, not theirs. Have a look around the website, as they have some nice bread ideas. I strongly recommend the book for lazy bread bakers. The results are more than acceptable and couldn't possibly be easier. I've tried all kinds of breadmaking methods, but keep returning to this one for convenience and cheapness.
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Apologies if the loaf didn't come out well. That was my fault, not theirs. Have a look around the website, as they have some nice bread ideas. I strongly recommend the book for lazy bread bakers. The results are more than acceptable and couldn't possibly be easier. I've tried all kinds of breadmaking methods, but keep returning to this one for convenience and cheapness.
No need to apologise at all, it was probably my fault if anybodies, :nowink: I forgot to flour my hands so every thing stuck, and I'm trying out the halogen oven, which I am still learning, so that was 2 opportunities for things to go wrong. I deliberately only used a small amount so I would have some left to experiment with. And anyway it tasted nice and good exercise for the jaws. Thanks for the further instructions, it is quite simple though, isn't it. That method certainly has potential to be useful and easy if I can get the hang of it.
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The key is to leave the dough in the fridge for a few hours after its initial rise. It makes it much easier to handle when you come to shape your loaf. Any unused dough goes back in the fridge. According to the book, it will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks. It never lasts that long here! What they do say is that towards the end of the two weeks, it won't rise as much during the second rise, so it's best used for flat breads, foccacia say.
You were right about flouring your hands before shaping. It also helps to scatter a bit of flour on the surface of the amount of dough in the container that you want to use for your loaf. When they remove dough from their container, they grab it with their floured hands and then cut it off with scissors. They drop the ball of dough into a little flour, shake of the excess and then start to 'cloak' it.
Another handy thing is that they suggest not washing out your container after you've finished your batch of dough. Just make up your next batch in the same container with the leftover bits of dough from the previous lot. I've done this, though I must admit I was a bit worried at first. Their argument is that it's not very different to the sourdough technique and it does improve the flavour slightly. It certainly makes washing-up much easier.
Try the hot water trick for a better crust if it was very chewy. It's recommended on the Lidl bread mix packets and it does make a difference. I also dust the top with flour before baking, but I don't know if that has any impact on texture. Certainly looks good.
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I don't bake bread all the time and usuall buy allinsons but have bought and used aldi strong flout which is I think less that £1 for the big bag and its been good , going today so will check ,I mix in a mixer now and I find I get a better result , don't have the energy for all that kneading , made a lovley loaf the other day came out the oven as hubby came in from work ,
chrissie b
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I feel like a right cheat... but I love our cheap bread maker / machine. £89. I use it every day and we have bought no more than 4 shop made loaves in the last couple of months.
I often mix white and brown flour - usually use the cheap 89p a bag type of supermarket own brand.
Results are consistantly reliable - bread tastes good and has a good "crumb" (?) - recipe is easy. 10 minutes max to measure and add all ingredients, select programe and *clear-up (*at most a tiny rare sprinkle of flour on the work-top).
I often set the machine to make and bake over-night so the bread is cooled and ready for lunch.
Hand-made bread is lovely but I simply do not have the time. Our bread is a very good basic staple liked in preference to shop bought by the whole family including my mother. Cheaper too!
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I feel like a right cheat... but I love our cheap bread maker / machine. £89. I use it every day and we have bought no more than 4 shop made loaves in the last couple of months.
I often mix white and brown flour - usually use the cheap 89p a bag type of supermarket own brand.
Results are consistantly reliable - bread tastes good and has a good "crumb" (?) - recipe is easy. 10 minutes max to measure and add all ingredients, select programe and *clear-up (*at most a tiny rare sprinkle of flour on the work-top).
I often set the machine to make and bake over-night so the bread is cooled and ready for lunch.
Hand-made bread is lovely but I simply do not have the time. Our bread is a very good basic staple liked in preference to shop bought by the whole family including my mother. Cheaper too!
it isn't so much mixing white and brown flours I was asking about but using a plain flour instead of strong flour. I use a bread maker too and its great. I'm going to try using plain in it and see how it goes.
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I too use a bread machine most of the time, generally when I get up for work, I use the end of the loaf for my sandwiches, and put the machine on, then 3 hours later when the rest of the family get up (9am) there is a lovely hot fresh loaf waiting for them.
Grendel
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just love the smell of bread you just carnt beat it no matter how its made , I think the rougher it looks the better it tastes all those knobbly bits .
chrissie b
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I've found the advice on this site very useful ;)
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/10/bake-your-own-bread
Cheers, Tony. :wub:
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At long last, Annen. I've come across this, which you might find useful.
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2010/02/09/back-to-basics-tips-and-techniques-to-create-a-great-loaf-in-5-minutes-a-day
Here's a video in which one of the authors demonstrates the 'cloaking' technique. He goes on to make pita bread, but the cloaking technique is the same for all their loaves.
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2010/03/08/new-video-shaping-the-ball-from-a-very-wet-dough
(Edited to add link to video)
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Thanks for those links, it is a lot clearer. My loaves were very wet and when I shaped them, they wouldn't form a cob loaf, but settled and spread out into a flat loaf. When I broke the cooked loaf open it had huge bubbles, so I think I have gone wrong somewhere in the rising of the dough. (it was still nice though) I have given up bread for the moment because it is just too temptaceous and I am trying to lose a few pounds, but when I am down to my target weight I will give your method another go because it looks useful.
I've also been reading your diary, it is interesting to see how even in Spain you are weather challenged, but just differently. And I also am addicted to this website :) somebody always knows the answer when you ask ;)
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Spain is huge and has many different types of landscape. The typical view of the Spanish climate applies only to coastal areas, and even then not all of Spain's coast. Here it's perishing cold in winter, especially at night, and boiling hot in summer; dry for most of the year but we have periods of torrential downpours and tremendous winds that go on for weeks on end. The longest wet spell we had went on for six weeks, when 440 litres of rain (which I calculate to be getting on for a hundred gallons or 44 cm) fell per square metre (hope I've got my calculations on gallons and cm right).
Despite the weather, it's a fantastic place to live, which is just as well really!