I'm surprised your husband can eat rye bread as rye contains gluten.
He has a capricious and unpredictable digestive system...
Tesco's do a very nice corn loaf but a lot of the more unusual breads aren't in stock at present. Regarding gluten free flour, I've never cooked with it but am going to attempt gluten free scones in the next day or so. I'm gearing myself up for the rolling out of the dough to be a problem.
Apologies for being a bit off topic in a bread making thread.
Over here, the stores sell a gluten free flour that works just like regular flour. A good friend is a beautiful baker and has family members with two different forms of celiac disease. She bakes the loveliest things for them and posts photos on Facebook.
I bake but I don’t bake bread, and my wife is gluten-free, but we were given 5 lbs of high quality, locally milled unbleached bread flour, so there was a need to think of something to bake with it. Daughter, who’s home from college thanks to The Situation, had enjoyed some English muffins (as they’re called here—I assume in the UK they’re just “muffins”) we’d gotten from a local bakery—so much better than the mass-produced ones available at the grocery store—so yesterday I tried my hand at making them. Finding yeast was a challenge.
They didn’t turn out too bad at all, if I do say so myself. I’ll give it another go later this week.
I have started a sourdough starter. Today was day 2 -- threw away half, and added equal parts of flour and water, stirred, recovered, put in warm place. Supposedly in 5 to 7 days I should have enough active starter to actually bake a loaf. We shall see!
If, like me, you have been brought up so that throwing away food is difficult, about two minutes into this youtube there is an example of cooking the mother that is often discarded.
Thank you, @LatchKeyKid ! I've been strongly considering making sourdough for a while, and that video was really informative!
When I was growing up, all the mothers near me baked bread every week for the family. So, when I left home, it was completely natural to bake my bread, too. Part of my weight problem was that the freshly baked bread had to be tested with good butter! Delicious!
I rarely bake bread anymore, but have done a few loaves over the past year or so. My son-in-law got very sick with flu, so I made homemade chicken soup and bread for him. Even though he hadn't felt like eating for a few days, he dug into the still warm bread.
I suppose this doesn't count for all you keen people as I use a bread machine. Apart from the hole in the bottom of the loaf, it's very convenient. I must have hardly bought any ready baked bread in the last 15 years. Mine also makes rather nice tea bread to quite a selection of recipes.
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.
Sourdough is quite old, the leavened bread the Israelites didn't bake would have been sourdough. Saving old dough is sourdough 0.5.
Sourdough takes twice as long to rise as yeasted dough, but has much more flavour, especially in the interior.
Sourdough gets its flavour because it's actually a symbiosis of a bacteria and a yeast. The bacteria makes it sour. It also acts as a preservative by lowering the pH. Sourdough bread will keep just fine unrefrigerated for three days.
IMHO the sourdough came first in America, the "artisanal" came later. I don't remember a time without sourdough, and I'm over fifty from Southern California. But there was definitely a time without "artisanal," at least in terms of baking.
Or, as it invariably got mispronounced by my workmates, artesian. (borehole bread?!)
I have a book by Andrew Whitley called Bread Matters which starts by ranting about how modern bread had all the time taken out of it and replaced by lots of yeast and chemicals, then takes you through adding time back in - basic bread, then saving a lump of old dough, then full-on sourdough. Sadly I never made bread regularly enough for it to be worth having a sourdough starter.
I remember reading somewhere recently that you can do sourdough in a machine. It has to sit for 24 hours. I'll post if I can find the link.
I make ordinary yeast bread. Three 600gm loaves about every 10 days. I have made sourdough, but although it's ok as bread, it's not really sour enough. I will get another mother soon.
I like kneading and have got to know when the gluten will allow the bread to hold its shape. But I have not reached the stage where I would be confident of making a cottage loaf that has a smaller part loaf on top of the larger half.
IMHO the sourdough came first in America, the "artisanal" came later. I don't remember a time without sourdough, and I'm over fifty from Southern California. But there was definitely a time without "artisanal," at least in terms of baking.
Yes. When I was in Canada, around 25 years ago, sourdough was just a regular bread in the supermarket, and a very common one. Not with the specialty breads.
Years ago, when I was in my 20s, a number of women friends in the neighbourhood I was living/working in at the time got very, very into something that I assume, looking back, may have been sourdough. A friend would gift you some thick, viscous liquid in a jar (is sourdough liquid?) and you would keep it on your kitchen counter, possibly putting something into it or just ignoring it, and it would start to grow. And grow. And then you poured some off into a couple more jars, and gave it to some more friends with the idea that they would start their own. I think it was meant to be a lovely little callback to a simpler time, connecting us all to the joys of bread-making or whatnot.
There were a few problems.
1. I was given some of this "starter" (I think that's what they were calling it) and accepted it out of a feeling that I must, although at that point in my life I had never attempted to bake any bread and had no intention of doing so.
2. In a community of limited size, there was a natural limit to the number of friends you could pawn this stuff off on. Very quickly you reached the point where you asked a friend, "Would you like some of my starter?" but every friend you asked had her own and was trying to find people to give it away to. I don't recall there being any talk of throwing any out. You were supposed to keep giving and giving but that was clearly unsustainable.
3. If you were, like me, not that into the project to start with, it was inevitable that at some point you'd get busy, forget the whole thing, and come into your kitchen to find that the starter had overflowed its jar and, like a living thing, crept out, oozed all over, and colonized your kitchen counter, and you'd have to clean up the whole mess (as you can tell, a lot of my memories of this whole adventure from 30 years ago are vague, but the sight of that stuff all over my counter is still pretty vivid in my mind's eye).
I do not recall ever making any bread. I think it ended after the exploding-onto-the-counter episode, when I not only cleaned up the mess but chucked out the original, and for several weeks afterwards had to tell all my friends that no, I would not be accepting any of their starter. Then the whole craze died down.
It's hovered at the back of my memory as a dim cautionary tale all these years until aroused by the current interest in baking plus yeast shortage, which has led people to talk about their sourdough. Even though a certain amount of bread-making has been happening in my house (more by my husband than by me), I have avoided all talk of sourdough like, well, the plague, because of this memory.
What was that stuff? Was that sourdough? Was the whole thing a fever dream?
Trudy, could that have been Amish friendship bread/cake? I remember about thirty years ago that was the big thing for a little while! In fact, talking about the sourdough reminded me of the friendship bread starters we all had back then. It's a lot easier than the sourdough starter.
Oh gosh yes that's what it was! I don't remember the bag but that was probably part of it. So glad that others remember the same thing from the same time period, with some of the same frustrations. I would not have been able to access the phrase "Amish friendship bread" from my memory but as soon as you said it the right note chimed in my brain.
I was given a Herman/Friendship cake starter back in the eighties and, like most people, went through all my friends and relations before abandoning the process.
Then it seemed to have a resurgence about 15-20 years ago, and my DiL gave me some starter. That ran the same course, although I did occasionally freeze the starter, to have a break from all that cake, and it worked well when defrosted.
Eventually I left the frozen starter sitting at the bottom of the freezer until I didn't fancy using it, and have never wanted Herman cake badly enough to start another craze for it.
Or maybe it is still out there, tyrannising another generation of home bakers?.
So, as with many pandemics, it had a second wave, which I was lucky enough to miss. Hopefully it's been eradicated in the population now ... surely we've achieved Friendship Cake Herd Immunity.
So, as with many pandemics, it had a second wave, which I was lucky enough to miss. Hopefully it's been eradicated in the population now ... surely we've achieved Friendship Cake Herd Immunity.
OK, I have 16kg of flour and no yeast. So I made some buttermilk and a couple of loaves of soda bread. But while Mr Cats liked that I'm not so keen. So, I looked up a recipe for a sourdough starter to use until my ordered yeast arrives. And began making it. By day 5 when I seemed to have a lot - yesterday - I came to the instruction on the starter recipe which said something about "discarding half as usual". What?? I looked back - no mention of discarding half had occurred till now at any point (do not use this recipe). So I had about 2 pints of yeasty foam. I mixed a lot of flour, some more water and some salt into it and let it sit. In three hours it was threatening to overflow and flood the kitchen. So I kneaded it and beat it back, lined tins (so it would have shape) and left it to sit in them overnight. And then this morning I baked it. And it actually turned out OK. But I won't use that method again.
Years ago, when I was in my 20s, a number of women friends in the neighbourhood I was living/working in at the time got very, very into something that I assume, looking back, may have been sourdough. A friend would gift you some thick, viscous liquid in a jar (is sourdough liquid?) and you would keep it on your kitchen counter, possibly putting something into it or just ignoring it, and it would start to grow. And grow. And then you poured some off into a couple more jars, and gave it to some more friends with the idea that they would start their own. I think it was meant to be a lovely little callback to a simpler time, connecting us all to the joys of bread-making or whatnot.
There were a few problems.
1. I was given some of this "starter" (I think that's what they were calling it) and accepted it out of a feeling that I must, although at that point in my life I had never attempted to bake any bread and had no intention of doing so.
2. In a community of limited size, there was a natural limit to the number of friends you could pawn this stuff off on. Very quickly you reached the point where you asked a friend, "Would you like some of my starter?" but every friend you asked had her own and was trying to find people to give it away to. I don't recall there being any talk of throwing any out. You were supposed to keep giving and giving but that was clearly unsustainable.
3. If you were, like me, not that into the project to start with, it was inevitable that at some point you'd get busy, forget the whole thing, and come into your kitchen to find that the starter had overflowed its jar and, like a living thing, crept out, oozed all over, and colonized your kitchen counter, and you'd have to clean up the whole mess (as you can tell, a lot of my memories of this whole adventure from 30 years ago are vague, but the sight of that stuff all over my counter is still pretty vivid in my mind's eye).
I do not recall ever making any bread. I think it ended after the exploding-onto-the-counter episode, when I not only cleaned up the mess but chucked out the original, and for several weeks afterwards had to tell all my friends that no, I would not be accepting any of their starter. Then the whole craze died down.
It's hovered at the back of my memory as a dim cautionary tale all these years until aroused by the current interest in baking plus yeast shortage, which has led people to talk about their sourdough. Even though a certain amount of bread-making has been happening in my house (more by my husband than by me), I have avoided all talk of sourdough like, well, the plague, because of this memory.
What was that stuff? Was that sourdough? Was the whole thing a fever dream?
When I was a child, our mothers passed around a thing called a 'Ginger beer plant" which sounds a bit like that. It didn't have leaves or any of the things a normal plant has! It made the fizz in ginger beer, but the bottles used to blow up. Ginger beer was supposed to be non-alcoholic and a drink for children. I suspect this sort of ginger beer wasn't quite, though I don't think it would have been very strong.
One puzzling thing about these concoctions is that somebody must know somewhere how to start the first one, or to start a new one, but nobody ever seems to divulge this mysterious, and I suspect not very curious secret.
Never had a ginger beer ‘plant’ but I’ve often made ginger beer and used yeast to get it to ferment. The art is to get it going fizzy for 48 hours and then either drink it or stick it in the fridge while it is still fairly low alcohol. I use the strong swing top bottles designed for fizzy drinks as it definitely can be explosive. Now I want to make some!
My mum made some ginger beer when I was a teenager. I got the job of labelling the bottles and (bored after writing 'ginger beer' however many times) labelled the last couple of bottles "rocket fuel". Of course it was one of those that exploded...
When I was a child, our mothers passed around a thing called a 'Ginger beer plant" which sounds a bit like that. It didn't have leaves or any of the things a normal plant has! It made the fizz in ginger beer, but the bottles used to blow up. Ginger beer was supposed to be non-alcoholic and a drink for children. I suspect this sort of ginger beer wasn't quite, though I don't think it would have been very strong.
One puzzling thing about these concoctions is that somebody must know somewhere how to start the first one, or to start a new one, but nobody ever seems to divulge this mysterious, and I suspect not very curious secret.
You beat me to it. Ever had a jarful of the stuff explode in your kitchen?
Yes, and a babe in his father's arms, both of them dripping blood all over the place.
(I was at work)
One after another 7 green bottles exploded.
I have never made it again, needless to add
I remember my mother keeping a ginger beer plant, late 1950s. A bit too gingery for me back then.
In the 1980s we lived in a house with several apple trees, and someone, somewhere, gave me a recipe for something called "Apple Ale", which was made by steeping cut up apples in water and sugar - and possibly other ingredients such as lemon juice or spices like cinnamon & cloves, I can't quite remember after all this time.
The natural yeasts on the skins caused fermentation so I presume it was alcoholic, but to what extent I have no idea. The kids got to drink it when it was just a bit fizzy, but didn't like the taste much as it got stronger. I preferred it later, when it was less sweet
I had a couple of successful brews but, after a break for a year or two, the third attempt was completely flat. It was only some years later that a possible reason occurred to me.
Because of the time lag I gave the brewing bucket a thorough clean before I started - with Milton sterilising solution.
I assume that had the effect of killing off the natural yeasts.
I remember my mother keeping a ginger beer plant, late 1950s. A bit too gingery for me back then.
In the 1980s we lived in a house with several apple trees, and someone, somewhere, gave me a recipe for something called "Apple Ale", which was made by steeping cut up apples in water and sugar - and possibly other ingredients such as lemon juice or spices like cinnamon & cloves, I can't quite remember after all this time.
The natural yeasts on the skins caused fermentation so I presume it was alcoholic, but to what extent I have no idea. The kids got to drink it when it was just a bit fizzy, but didn't like the taste much as it got stronger. I preferred it later, when it was less sweet
I had a couple of successful brews but, after a break for a year or two, the third attempt was completely flat. It was only some years later that a possible reason occurred to me.
Because of the time lag I gave the brewing bucket a thorough clean before I started - with Milton sterilising solution.
I assume that had the effect of killing off the natural yeasts.
Sadly I no longer have the apple trees.
You can make an excellent home made wine from cooking apples. Many years ago I made 4 gallons in a 5 gallon brewing bucket. The quantities meant one did not need to wash everything as thoroughly as for most home made wine. One simply chopped up the apples, peels, cores and all to fill the bucket, added water and a powder that speeded up the process by which the chopped apples broke down and that was it. One was, though, definitely advised to use a decent white wine yeast. After a few days, you syphoned off the liquid, squeezed as much liquid as you could get from the mush, and threw away the mush. You then left it for some time. It was excellent, but still, and made no claim to be non-alcoholic.
This was definitely a home made wine and not cider, by the way.
Have not been bread making at all and came home today and was motivated. Does anyone else use warm bread as an excuse to eat an otherwise excessive amount of butter? Soooo good
Comments
Tesco's do a very nice corn loaf but a lot of the more unusual breads aren't in stock at present. Regarding gluten free flour, I've never cooked with it but am going to attempt gluten free scones in the next day or so. I'm gearing myself up for the rolling out of the dough to be a problem.
Apologies for being a bit off topic in a bread making thread.
I’m very pleased about that
They didn’t turn out too bad at all, if I do say so myself. I’ll give it another go later this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJEHsvW2J6M&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0GcsnNuvsjI0KrWqp4tI7fmeGaBetXfur0RcKp79pE3ekJ--d1TKsWK24
When I was growing up, all the mothers near me baked bread every week for the family. So, when I left home, it was completely natural to bake my bread, too. Part of my weight problem was that the freshly baked bread had to be tested with good butter! Delicious!
I rarely bake bread anymore, but have done a few loaves over the past year or so. My son-in-law got very sick with flu, so I made homemade chicken soup and bread for him. Even though he hadn't felt like eating for a few days, he dug into the still warm bread.
I tell you, it's love in a loaf!
Looks like I deal in drugs!
Thanks for the idea @Bishops Finger 👏🏼
My people will be in touch with your people...
Sourdough is quite old, the leavened bread the Israelites didn't bake would have been sourdough. Saving old dough is sourdough 0.5.
Sourdough takes twice as long to rise as yeasted dough, but has much more flavour, especially in the interior.
Sourdough gets its flavour because it's actually a symbiosis of a bacteria and a yeast. The bacteria makes it sour. It also acts as a preservative by lowering the pH. Sourdough bread will keep just fine unrefrigerated for three days.
I have a book by Andrew Whitley called Bread Matters which starts by ranting about how modern bread had all the time taken out of it and replaced by lots of yeast and chemicals, then takes you through adding time back in - basic bread, then saving a lump of old dough, then full-on sourdough. Sadly I never made bread regularly enough for it to be worth having a sourdough starter.
I make ordinary yeast bread. Three 600gm loaves about every 10 days. I have made sourdough, but although it's ok as bread, it's not really sour enough. I will get another mother soon.
I like kneading and have got to know when the gluten will allow the bread to hold its shape. But I have not reached the stage where I would be confident of making a cottage loaf that has a smaller part loaf on top of the larger half.
Possibly a post by me upthread?
Certainly my bread maker (fairly new Panasonic) does this.
Yes. When I was in Canada, around 25 years ago, sourdough was just a regular bread in the supermarket, and a very common one. Not with the specialty breads.
There were a few problems.
1. I was given some of this "starter" (I think that's what they were calling it) and accepted it out of a feeling that I must, although at that point in my life I had never attempted to bake any bread and had no intention of doing so.
2. In a community of limited size, there was a natural limit to the number of friends you could pawn this stuff off on. Very quickly you reached the point where you asked a friend, "Would you like some of my starter?" but every friend you asked had her own and was trying to find people to give it away to. I don't recall there being any talk of throwing any out. You were supposed to keep giving and giving but that was clearly unsustainable.
3. If you were, like me, not that into the project to start with, it was inevitable that at some point you'd get busy, forget the whole thing, and come into your kitchen to find that the starter had overflowed its jar and, like a living thing, crept out, oozed all over, and colonized your kitchen counter, and you'd have to clean up the whole mess (as you can tell, a lot of my memories of this whole adventure from 30 years ago are vague, but the sight of that stuff all over my counter is still pretty vivid in my mind's eye).
I do not recall ever making any bread. I think it ended after the exploding-onto-the-counter episode, when I not only cleaned up the mess but chucked out the original, and for several weeks afterwards had to tell all my friends that no, I would not be accepting any of their starter. Then the whole craze died down.
It's hovered at the back of my memory as a dim cautionary tale all these years until aroused by the current interest in baking plus yeast shortage, which has led people to talk about their sourdough. Even though a certain amount of bread-making has been happening in my house (more by my husband than by me), I have avoided all talk of sourdough like, well, the plague, because of this memory.
What was that stuff? Was that sourdough? Was the whole thing a fever dream?
Then it seemed to have a resurgence about 15-20 years ago, and my DiL gave me some starter. That ran the same course, although I did occasionally freeze the starter, to have a break from all that cake, and it worked well when defrosted.
Eventually I left the frozen starter sitting at the bottom of the freezer until I didn't fancy using it, and have never wanted Herman cake badly enough to start another craze for it.
Or maybe it is still out there, tyrannising another generation of home bakers?.
That was your best line
🤣🤣
I agree.
I bought a 500g bag of dried yeast from eBay. It has no additives and works excellently.
One puzzling thing about these concoctions is that somebody must know somewhere how to start the first one, or to start a new one, but nobody ever seems to divulge this mysterious, and I suspect not very curious secret.
You beat me to it. Ever had a jarful of the stuff explode in your kitchen?
(I was at work)
One after another 7 green bottles exploded.
I have never made it again, needless to add
In the 1980s we lived in a house with several apple trees, and someone, somewhere, gave me a recipe for something called "Apple Ale", which was made by steeping cut up apples in water and sugar - and possibly other ingredients such as lemon juice or spices like cinnamon & cloves, I can't quite remember after all this time.
The natural yeasts on the skins caused fermentation so I presume it was alcoholic, but to what extent I have no idea. The kids got to drink it when it was just a bit fizzy, but didn't like the taste much as it got stronger. I preferred it later, when it was less sweet
I had a couple of successful brews but, after a break for a year or two, the third attempt was completely flat. It was only some years later that a possible reason occurred to me.
Because of the time lag I gave the brewing bucket a thorough clean before I started - with Milton sterilising solution.
I assume that had the effect of killing off the natural yeasts.
Sadly I no longer have the apple trees.
It's just unfortunate that that flavour is an unpleasant one.
This was definitely a home made wine and not cider, by the way.
Yes, it’s a bit strong for for me!
Well, the first loaf in months is on the cooling rack. Not as risen as some, but not dwarf bread either.
Aye, well if you forget to put the gravel in.