Bread making š
Iāve made my own bread for years, Iām allergic to the preservative they put in bought bread.
Flour and yeast are hard to come by just now so I thought Iād start a thread about ways round this - and to share places we can find flour - plus how you make your bread.
This post has me experimenting with sugar and dried yeast.
Thank you @Alan Cresswell !
Flour and yeast are hard to come by just now so I thought Iād start a thread about ways round this - and to share places we can find flour - plus how you make your bread.
This post has me experimenting with sugar and dried yeast.
Thank you @Alan Cresswell !
Alan Cresswell wrote: »If you can get hold of dried yeast, you can take some into sugary water and let it grow. Use some of it for your bread and leave the rest growing. That will allow a small quantity of dried yeast last a lot longer. The trick is finding the yeast in the first place ...

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6oz plain flour
6oz self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 pint buttermilk*
Combine dry ingredients in large bowl, leaving a well in the centre into which you pour the buttermilk. Mix with a knife (be quick) until you have dough - add a drop of milk if too dry - then tip onto floured board to knead for a couple of minutes before rollung into a large ball. Put onto floured baking sheet, flatten flightly and cut cross across top and pop into moderate oven (AGA bottom of roasting oven, Gas 6, Fan 180) for half-an-hour until it sounds hollow when tapped.
* if you can't get buttermilk whisk 2 tablespoons of lemon juice into half-a-pint of full-fat milk.
Tesco have been selling flour in 16 kilo bags... I haven't bought one because I have nowhere to store that much, but I was tempted...
I have a good naan recipe too but it is yeasted.
On the advice of a friend who is practiced with this, I followed the following recipes to make 2 breads so far (second this morning):
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/no-knead-sourdough-bread-recipe
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-starter-recipe
I was worried at first that I'd get lots of waste -- but have been using the discards in pancakes and naan.
Only thing of note is that some flours seem to work better to feed the starter than others - so some trial and error was needed. I assume if you start off with dried yeast you essentially end up in the same scenario anyway, as sourdough is just a colony of natural yeast.
I make just enough starter for what I'm planning to bake. I don't bother to save it.
Husband is the baker here and currently has yeast, having killed his last sourdough. I like making flatbreads, though I sometimes make naan or focaccia. Paul Hollywoodās crumpet recipe is my favourite bread thing. Alas I need to reduce my carbs for health reasons though.
A friend of mine, whose lady wife is currently in a care home, has found he now has time to make his own bread, and seems to be making quite a good job of it, judging by photos(!).
Not bad for a 70-year old ex-soldier/lorry driver...
I don't know where he buys the flour - he lives almost next door to a large Asda, but I think supplies have been erratic.
1/4 tsp yeast
3 cups water
1.5 cups each whole wheat and white flour. Stir 100x same direction. Leave in kitchen covered until it rises and falls. 2 days.
This I make into 3 loaves, saving a small handful of dough after second rising for next batch. The day of making, 1st rising is in the morning and depending on how warm house is, 2nd rise is 3 hours later and baking is 2 to 4 hours later. You can delay any step by putting in a fridge for 4 or 5 days. Save a small handful and use this in the next batch as starter. It gets more sour dough as you repeat. I don't like sour dough much as bread so I stop after 3rd go
I buy 20kg bags of flour. 44 lbs. It's very cheap here. Local.
If you don't have yeast. Soak 1/4 cup of raisins in 2/3 cup water until they float. Use that water at the beginning. And be patient.
I didn't bother with the sesame because I don't particularly like it. The only other thing I would change is that the recipe said to make 8 rolls but I thought they came out a bit small. I would make 6 next time.
Bread with yeast can be dead simple tbh, prior to running out of yeast I was making this recipe regularly:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/olive-oil-bread
Thanks - I might try it sometime. It's the timing elements that tend to put me off, such as leaving something for an hour - If I leave something, I tend to forget all about it! I prefer to prepare and cook something all at once, with an easy end in sight right from the start.
It's no big deal if you leave it a bit too long and it over-rises. It's not like leaving a roast in the oven too long.
Iām the same but I use timers a LOT šš
He started making sourdough at the end of last year, so has not had to find anywhere selling yeast.
I bought a 10kg bag of Tesco chapatti flour recently. It doesn't seem to be Atta flour, which is what chapattis are (apparently, I read) mainly made with and which is (apparently, I read) hard to make loaves with. Instead it's a kind of wholemeal-ish bread flour. It makes good loaves with 3/4 chap. flour, 1/4 white bread flour (making the latter go further).
I usually use this yeast but I bought one of these recently. A bit expensive but there's a lot of it at 1 tsp per loaf. We'll see how it goes.
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All this talk of sourdough, though, puzzles me. I've never tried it. As far as I'm aware, you can't use it in a machine. Has anyone ever succeeded? Indeed, is there a shipmate who can tell me they use sourdough in a machine all the time, it's great, and if so, how? But apart from the claim that one can make it yourself,
- What are the advantages of sourdough?
- What's it supposed to do that granulated yeast or what I call pudgy yeast don't do?
- Where does the idea come from?
- Is it anything more than a fad?
As far as I've been able to ascertain, it's not part of any baking tradition in Britain. Before the mid nineteenth century people used to get yeast from brewers (not very reliable as apparently it doesn't rise very well) or keep back a small dollop of dough from the previous baking. Am I right that sourdough came here in the last 10 or less years from 'artisan' bakers in California who picked it up from Scandinavian immigrants in the US who had brought the practice from their homelands? Or have some people always been using it? If the Scandinavian connection is correct, that's intriguing as Scandinavia is a lot closer to here than it is to North America and parts of Britain have close links with Scandinavia that go back 12-1300 years.
One thing I've done for years is to replace lard with olive oil. It's easier to measure and I suspect it's better for you.
Dude, we've had sourdough forever (well, seems like it to me, certainly my life long, which is 50 years) in California. I never knew it to be anything but mainstream. The advantage of it, of course, is that you don't have to go find a yeast packet. But the taste is wonderful, which is why we eat it in non-crazy times.
You surprise me by implying you've not had it in Britain. It sounds rather like you telling me you don't have spaghetti or chocolate chip cookies. Possible, but odd.
I think sourdough has been knocking around for a long time, but in ethnic or cultural subgroups. I think I first met it in a (now sadly gone) Jewish bakery. Now I often make a point of buying Polish sourdough.
Similarly focaccia and ciabatta, croissants and baguette, naan and pitta have all migrated into the mainstream.
I use my bread machine just for mixing and proving the dough as I donāt have much upper body strength, then I bake the bread in the oven. This also means I can do fancy breads like focaccia.
Like @Heavenlyannie, I use the bread machine for the kneading bit then put it in the oven in a normal tin to bake.
Best of both worlds.
š
I first heard of sourdough about six months ago.
No cookies here - only biscuits
And we do have cookies as well as biscuits. They are the ones which are softer in the middle, and thicker than such things as the crisper digestives and hobnobs. I think Maryland cookies (chocolate chip) have been that since they arrived on the supermarket shelves. It's a useful distinction.
I did know a few people who made it back in out "Barbara and Tom" days, nearly 40 years ago, but it was very niche then.
Otherwise: Yesterday we got a flyer delivered from an Italian family restaurant in the next town that has started doing takeaway. Apart from the usual dishes, they have included a deli section on their takeaway menu and both caputo flour and yeast are listed. If you have access to such a restaurant, where they make their own dough, it might be worth trying there for flour & yeast.
Possibly not available from chain restaurants.
If you are on good terms with your local baker, they may be willing to sell you some fresh yeast. I used to buy fresh yeast from the bakery department at my local supermarket (the challenge was attracting someone's attention to ask for it) and freeze it in 30g chunks, which is enough for one batch of bread. It doesn't work in a bread machine though, so we are keeping our eyes open for stray packets/tins of instant yeast...
@Bishops Finger I did consider buying a bag and offering to split it with one or more friends, and if it had been strong flour I would have done it; but they only had plain and self-raising flour on offer. I still have enough of that, for now.
Glad to have missed the medieval loaf (aka Dwarf Bread), bread that included alum and human sweat, and the never-less-than-a-day-old National Loaf.
My son makes cracking soda bread. When he can visit I'm ordering some for lunch.
Flour, yeast, and sourdough starters are all available here now. There was a brief time where there was not a consistent supply but most stores have figured out that people are looking for it.
When I use the bread machine, I boil a cup of water, put most in the machine to pre-heat the other ingredients, add my tblsp of sugar to the hot remnant and stir it up, add cold water to make tepid, and add yeast. Then I wait for the cup to foam up, and then I add it to the machine and get the program to start. It seems to me any old yeast would work OK like this, so long as you can get it to start on warm water and sugar?
Bread in France is an art form. Becoming a boulanger requires considerable training. One of the reasons I don't make bread often is that I can't make anything anywhere near as good as what I can buy in the organic bakery round the corner. This is partly but not entirely to do with their oven. I think pain au levain is probably the closest thing to sourdough but French bakers have been using added yeast for a long time. For bread to be sold as pain de tradition in France it may only contain flour, yeast, salt and water and nothing else. Baguette is becoming less popular these days because it doesn't keep and is considered less healthy so people are going back to more old-fashioned kinds of bread - usually giant loaves that you buy a hunk of.
@mark_in_manchester thanks for the tip, if I run out of instant yeast I'll try it.
Wizardry - pure wizardry! š„ š
Lol, diabolical.
I watched that documentary too - I thought it very interesting and well put together.
I used to have a bread machine and for some time, when the children were young, home made bread for Sunday tea was a thing. Generally now I don't eat bread but since lockdown it's been a feature of lunches in a way it never was when I was working. Mr Nen is gluten intolerant so has to have special stuff - rye sourdough or corn bread, or the completely gluten free bread which he doesn't much enjoy, but I confess I just buy it (so I don't really belong on this thread and will take myself off shortly
I nearly ran out of yeast a few weeks ago, but managed to get some on eBay. I found I had to change my strong white to stoneground wholemeal ratio a bit to compensate for the new yeast as it fell back on baking the first couple of times.
Iāve now very nearly run out of flour. Must go and try and get some tomorrow.