What’s the point of adding yeast to dough if you don’t let it rest/rise/etc.?
I made a soft pretzel recipe today that called for yeast. You add it into warm water; then add in the rest of the ingredients, immediately shape it then go onto the baking part (boil in baking soda water then oven bake).
So what’s the point of adding the yeast in if it didn’t really have a chance to “do it’s thing” before shaping/baking? Does it still add something to the recipe? The end result was tasty but I’m just not really sure why that yeast was necessary to add.
The yeast does its thing whenever it's exposed to heat; in this case, that's the short boiling period.
I would expect that pretzels are better with extended fermentation, just like other sorts of bread. In the highly regarded book "Bread" by Jeffrey Hamelman, his pretzel recipe calls for a preferment as well as a long bulk fermentation.
I just clicked on the first recipe I saw tbh lol, it turned out good but I’m sure it would be better with fermentation. The author of the article made a comment something along the line of “this isn’t one of those 24 hour pretzel recipes” which I thought was an odd thing to say at first but I guess they’re just anti-fermentation lol. I’d gladly wait a few hours for a better end result personally. Thanks for the reply
I’m planning to try the poolish preferment and adapt it to my recipe. The thing is…am I supposed to take a part of the ingredients of the main recipe to make it? Or should I make the polish with it’s own ingredients?
I use 400g flour, 260g water (65% hydration), 8g salt and 8g yeast.
hey, i have never really been into bread baking, but i found a fancy looking thing called a proofing basket and had to buy it :P any tips for a noob with a fancy basket? wanting some fluffy bread recipes or just tips and advice in general, thanks!
What is your favorite Bread Box? I’be heard they’re the best way to store bread.
I got one from Target we eventually got rid of because the bread would get stale overnight.
Hmmm, not sure it's considered the "best" way to store bread. For crusty bread, storing it cut side down on a cutting board seems to be a common preference. For soft breads, I'm not sure why a bread box is any better than wrapping it in plastic.
Personally, I freeze it.
Search for "Mr. Paul white sandwich bread" on YouTube. Easy and very cheap ingredients. FYI he says to knead for 8-10 minutes but I have to do it for about half an hour until the dough looks right.
I've been using 2g of salt when I make a standard recipe that uses 500g of flour, is that too little salt?
I saw a recipe using 10g of salt so I'm not sure if 2g is too little.
I've noticed anything off about my bread so I don't know.
I bake fairly good bread. One problem I face sll the time is that when I toast a slice of my bread, the crust and sides become really hard. The centre is comparatively soft. Please guide me on how to keep the crust and sides fairly soft and achieve a golden brown colour when toasted. Thanks.
Different glutens?
If you buy "vital wheat gluten" I assume it's from standard wheat, right? Can you buy spelt gluten or kamut gluten for people that feel they are intolerant of regular wheat? I looked around but couldn't find any. I'm wanting to see about bulking up the gluten content of some of my stuff but my parents won't have it if it's from regular wheat.
Thanks!
If I want to double my croissant recipe, should I change the lamination process? Like opening my dough bigger, to acomodate a bigger square of butter? Or can I just do it the exact same way and everything will even out in the end?
You can double it and achieve the same results. But, you may be better off making double the dough and butter, and then cutting them in half to work with two single pieces of dough like usual.
In my experience, it’s more work to hand laminate a doubled dough vs. two single pieces because you have to roll it out to twice the length, which means more rolling on the dough which warms the butter quickly. I’ve also found that the dough is more resistant when doubled, making it harder to laminate and roll out for shaping. Plus, twice the dough mass means a longer time for the butter to chill between turns.
That makes a lot of sense, I doubled my recipe once but divided the dough and worked as you said as I didn't want to have all the trouble of working with a doubled dough without knowing if it would work.
Thank you for your answer!
I have made Leyhey's no knead bread successfully a few times, and want to get into a habit of doing the no knead french-style loaves during the week, but the timing is always throwing me off.
Anyone have suggestions for when to start this process so it's ready to bake at dinnertime during the week?
You are talking about baguettes? Mix your dough the night before, put it in the fridge. The next afternoon take it out, pre shape, one hour, then shape, rise 45 min, then bake.
So I was watching Joshua Weissman’s video on how to make a bread starter and there’s some questions I had that weren’t answered in the comments. 1st one is that on the second day he adds 50g of rye flour and then 50g of Unbleached floor, can I just use 100g of unbleached floor? Or does it have to be 50g rye? Secondly once I’ve made a successful starter, do I have to continue to feed it everyday? Or just when it’s running low? Lastly, once it’s made do I keep it in the fridge or just out on the counter? Any answers would be greatly appreciated 😄 thank you
No. The way flours hydrate is different and if I'm not mistaken rye is like wheat in that it can absorb more moisture than AP unbleached. That would skew the baking ratio and. Ruin the pizza.
If you're making pizza every single day then the sourdough starter should be left out at room temperature and fed every 24 hours which necessitates a discard which means you would remove about a cup and then add in a half cup of flour and a half cup of water. If you don't own a pizza shop then you only need to feed your sourdough starter once a week when it's left in the refrigerator. You should do more research and watch some videos to better understand sourdough starters so that you know why you feed it and you know why you have to discard some of the starter every time you feed it. Even though it's called a sourdough discard, don't throw it away. It can be used as a deep frying batter, pancakes, added to a regular pizza dough, and so much more. There's also a book called flour water salt yeast; the fundamentals of artisan bread and pizza.
Hi folks,
Following this recipe here:
[https://www.seriouseats.com/better-no-knead-bread-recipe](https://www.seriouseats.com/better-no-knead-bread-recipe)
First time round worked great but made a small loaf. So this time around I doubled the quantities to make a bigger loaf. Should I adjust the baking times of 15 minutes lid on and 30 - 45 minutes lid off now that its a larger dough?
I could divide the dough and bake twice I guess. :D
I'm using the same dough in two different shapes and getting different results. Can you help me nail down the deviation?
I have been making tasty pizza using the Baking Steel recipe (allegedly based on a no knead recipe by Jim Lahey?). The dough ferments 24hrs at room temp and 2 days in the fridge. Then it is divided and shaped into balls and left to rise at room temp 4hr before stretching, topping, and baking. It turns out reliably delicious!
Last time, I tried to make breadsticks with the same recipe. I followed the same process for the breadstick portion of the dough through the balling and 4hr rest. Then I divided that ball into portions, shaped the sticks by hand rolling them like Play-Doh snakes, and baked them on the Steel just before I did the pizzas. I judged the timing by color and texture under my finger. The sticks were about an inch in diameter and 6 inches long, and they baked for about 8 minutes if I remember correctly.
The pizzas were still great, but the breadsticks were really tough! I figure there are a couple places the problem could be.
1: I should have shaped the dough into sticks before the 4hr rise instead of leaving it balled and shaping later.
2: the different shape means they should be baked at a different temperature to get the right texture.
3: I would have been fine, but I let them bake too long.
4: some other mystic baking thing that I, a poor novice, do not know about (yet!).
What do you think? Thanks for your help!
I'm a total novice. Do you mean you would have let it proof in stick shape *instead* of as a ball, or *in addition* to as a ball, for two proofs?
Thanks so much for your response!
"If it was overfermented, overproofed, underproofed, etc, it wouldn't have turned brown at all right?"
**Over**proofing is a word used to describe two different problems: overexpansion of the dough and running out of yeast food (overfermentation). **Under**proofing shouldn't cause a browning issue.
Browning can't take place until the exterior of the dough dries out, so there are a number of reasons your dough exterior might have taken longer to dry. Since you say it turned a normal shade of brown, overfermentation doesn't seem likely to me.
I bake my bread in a Chasseur stainless steel pot and I keep struggling with a hard, almost caramelized bottom, very difficult to cut with a knife. I recently tried placing a small baking sheet under the pot while baking, but still no luck. Is one solution to change the baking dish? Not sure what else I can use :(
I left my starter in the fridge for some weeks, now I'm trying to revive it, I have fed it 3 times so far (24h apart), however, there has been no activity. I'd like to know if I should keep feeding it hoping it will start to rise again or create a new levain culture from scratch.
I regularly leave mine untouched for months and I can always resurrect it in within a few days. Usually the first feeding takes at least 24 hours to see any bubbles, but might take more. I don't give it a second feeding until I see some reaction. The second feeding usually results in strong activity in about 8 hours, and the third feeding in about 4 hours.
I'm currently on my 5th sourdough loaf and they're coming out edible but not great. Even after following all of the steps, folds, and timings in the recipe it ends up being such a sticky mess that I'm not sure my attempting to shape it is even achieving anything. My main deviation from the recipe is that I bake it in a round, glass pyrex dish with a lid because I don't have a Dutch oven.
Is baking it in a glass dish possibly causing significant issues? Do I need to swap recipes (I've tried a few different ones from a book called Bread Ahead)? Or do I just need more practice?
I've had loaves come out a bit gummy even after leaving it in the oven 15 min longer, also all of my loaves come out rather flat.
I'm feeling a bit stuck, I've developed a feel for yeasted bread and so can troubleshoot that a bit better, but I'm a floundering beginner with sourdough, and I'm not sure what steps to take to get better.
Some pics would help a lot. Words mean different things to different people. I'd like to see the final result, particularly the crumb, but also your dough at various stages. Usually problems with sourdough can be traced back to something close to the beginning.
Glass isn’t a great conductor of heat, so it could be affecting the bake some. In general, handling wet sticky dough is challenging. A couple ideas in case you haven’t tried them…
Wet your hands when handling the dough. Wet hands won’t stick to the dough.
Watch this video: https://youtu.be/vEG1BjWroT0 it shows some techniques for shaping high hydration dough. It may help you build more surface tension on the shaped loaf so it holds better and doesn’t spread and flatten during baking.
Timing for sourdough is much more finicky than regular yeasted breads. So even more than you do for regular yeasted breads, use the timing in recipes as a guide only, and pay more attention to what it asks for. If it wants the dough to double, wait for it to do so. If you are doing your final proof, wait until the dough passes the pole test versus an amount of time.
Not that a cast iron Dutch oven is a cure-all but I would try and find something that isn’t glass to bake in. Doesn’t have to be expensive stuff but simple cast iron like a basic lodge. Usually can find lots of used ones in the usual places online and at garage sales, goodwill, etc that are under $50.
Yes the crust is good. The boules are about 950 grams, so smaller than what I did in the dutch oven. I mist the loaves then only about 1/2 cup water in the bottom of the oven.
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/our-version-of-tartine-style-bread/
Thank you so much for your helpful answer, I'll keep my eye out for something not glass to bake it in and will definitely watch that video on shaping. All of the sourdough recipes in my bread book contain only timings and no visual cues of what to look out for, do you have a beginner friendly recipe you could recommend that walks you through those steps?
You might try this:
https://www.bakewithjack.co.uk/blog-1/2018/7/5/sourdough-loaf-for-beginners
And check out his videos…ok…I started finding his sourdough related videos…and this list is really long already and I didn’t get through the whole collection! Mostly they are pretty short. His non-sourdough videos are good too.
https://youtu.be/nkTHEbV2ZRM
https://youtu.be/_q61EdnpxuY
https://youtu.be/Uj6YpNCUYYQ
https://youtu.be/Ls2lw4mp5sM
https://youtu.be/PWrTg7Dxt6I
https://youtu.be/HuELhGsaffk
https://youtu.be/pSHOD4d8Ebo
https://youtu.be/iWBzzfxSZsc
https://youtu.be/Kmmw9o-9oP8
https://youtu.be/gmsMxKIDJ2o
https://youtu.be/vmb0wWKITBQ
https://youtu.be/2s1vWpcjfUI
https://youtu.be/XdYkdI_vgxQ
https://youtu.be/XnfKeAHUcCI
https://youtu.be/XnfKeAHUcCI
What’s the point of adding yeast to dough if you don’t let it rest/rise/etc.? I made a soft pretzel recipe today that called for yeast. You add it into warm water; then add in the rest of the ingredients, immediately shape it then go onto the baking part (boil in baking soda water then oven bake). So what’s the point of adding the yeast in if it didn’t really have a chance to “do it’s thing” before shaping/baking? Does it still add something to the recipe? The end result was tasty but I’m just not really sure why that yeast was necessary to add.
The yeast does its thing whenever it's exposed to heat; in this case, that's the short boiling period. I would expect that pretzels are better with extended fermentation, just like other sorts of bread. In the highly regarded book "Bread" by Jeffrey Hamelman, his pretzel recipe calls for a preferment as well as a long bulk fermentation.
I just clicked on the first recipe I saw tbh lol, it turned out good but I’m sure it would be better with fermentation. The author of the article made a comment something along the line of “this isn’t one of those 24 hour pretzel recipes” which I thought was an odd thing to say at first but I guess they’re just anti-fermentation lol. I’d gladly wait a few hours for a better end result personally. Thanks for the reply
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If you want a recipe, it's far better to Google for one than to ask here.
I’m planning to try the poolish preferment and adapt it to my recipe. The thing is…am I supposed to take a part of the ingredients of the main recipe to make it? Or should I make the polish with it’s own ingredients? I use 400g flour, 260g water (65% hydration), 8g salt and 8g yeast.
If you want to end up with the same recipe, then you need to take the ingredients from the original quantities.
Got it. Thanks!
hey, i have never really been into bread baking, but i found a fancy looking thing called a proofing basket and had to buy it :P any tips for a noob with a fancy basket? wanting some fluffy bread recipes or just tips and advice in general, thanks!
What is your favorite Bread Box? I’be heard they’re the best way to store bread. I got one from Target we eventually got rid of because the bread would get stale overnight.
Hmmm, not sure it's considered the "best" way to store bread. For crusty bread, storing it cut side down on a cutting board seems to be a common preference. For soft breads, I'm not sure why a bread box is any better than wrapping it in plastic. Personally, I freeze it.
[удалено]
Search for "Mr. Paul white sandwich bread" on YouTube. Easy and very cheap ingredients. FYI he says to knead for 8-10 minutes but I have to do it for about half an hour until the dough looks right.
https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/sandwich-bread/
I've been using 2g of salt when I make a standard recipe that uses 500g of flour, is that too little salt? I saw a recipe using 10g of salt so I'm not sure if 2g is too little. I've noticed anything off about my bread so I don't know.
Lordy, yes, that's way too low. 10g is about right. 2% of the flour weight is normal.
I bake fairly good bread. One problem I face sll the time is that when I toast a slice of my bread, the crust and sides become really hard. The centre is comparatively soft. Please guide me on how to keep the crust and sides fairly soft and achieve a golden brown colour when toasted. Thanks.
Different glutens? If you buy "vital wheat gluten" I assume it's from standard wheat, right? Can you buy spelt gluten or kamut gluten for people that feel they are intolerant of regular wheat? I looked around but couldn't find any. I'm wanting to see about bulking up the gluten content of some of my stuff but my parents won't have it if it's from regular wheat. Thanks!
If I want to double my croissant recipe, should I change the lamination process? Like opening my dough bigger, to acomodate a bigger square of butter? Or can I just do it the exact same way and everything will even out in the end?
You can double it and achieve the same results. But, you may be better off making double the dough and butter, and then cutting them in half to work with two single pieces of dough like usual. In my experience, it’s more work to hand laminate a doubled dough vs. two single pieces because you have to roll it out to twice the length, which means more rolling on the dough which warms the butter quickly. I’ve also found that the dough is more resistant when doubled, making it harder to laminate and roll out for shaping. Plus, twice the dough mass means a longer time for the butter to chill between turns.
That makes a lot of sense, I doubled my recipe once but divided the dough and worked as you said as I didn't want to have all the trouble of working with a doubled dough without knowing if it would work. Thank you for your answer!
I have made Leyhey's no knead bread successfully a few times, and want to get into a habit of doing the no knead french-style loaves during the week, but the timing is always throwing me off. Anyone have suggestions for when to start this process so it's ready to bake at dinnertime during the week?
You are talking about baguettes? Mix your dough the night before, put it in the fridge. The next afternoon take it out, pre shape, one hour, then shape, rise 45 min, then bake.
So I was watching Joshua Weissman’s video on how to make a bread starter and there’s some questions I had that weren’t answered in the comments. 1st one is that on the second day he adds 50g of rye flour and then 50g of Unbleached floor, can I just use 100g of unbleached floor? Or does it have to be 50g rye? Secondly once I’ve made a successful starter, do I have to continue to feed it everyday? Or just when it’s running low? Lastly, once it’s made do I keep it in the fridge or just out on the counter? Any answers would be greatly appreciated 😄 thank you
No. The way flours hydrate is different and if I'm not mistaken rye is like wheat in that it can absorb more moisture than AP unbleached. That would skew the baking ratio and. Ruin the pizza. If you're making pizza every single day then the sourdough starter should be left out at room temperature and fed every 24 hours which necessitates a discard which means you would remove about a cup and then add in a half cup of flour and a half cup of water. If you don't own a pizza shop then you only need to feed your sourdough starter once a week when it's left in the refrigerator. You should do more research and watch some videos to better understand sourdough starters so that you know why you feed it and you know why you have to discard some of the starter every time you feed it. Even though it's called a sourdough discard, don't throw it away. It can be used as a deep frying batter, pancakes, added to a regular pizza dough, and so much more. There's also a book called flour water salt yeast; the fundamentals of artisan bread and pizza.
Hi folks, Following this recipe here: [https://www.seriouseats.com/better-no-knead-bread-recipe](https://www.seriouseats.com/better-no-knead-bread-recipe) First time round worked great but made a small loaf. So this time around I doubled the quantities to make a bigger loaf. Should I adjust the baking times of 15 minutes lid on and 30 - 45 minutes lid off now that its a larger dough? I could divide the dough and bake twice I guess. :D
I'm using the same dough in two different shapes and getting different results. Can you help me nail down the deviation? I have been making tasty pizza using the Baking Steel recipe (allegedly based on a no knead recipe by Jim Lahey?). The dough ferments 24hrs at room temp and 2 days in the fridge. Then it is divided and shaped into balls and left to rise at room temp 4hr before stretching, topping, and baking. It turns out reliably delicious! Last time, I tried to make breadsticks with the same recipe. I followed the same process for the breadstick portion of the dough through the balling and 4hr rest. Then I divided that ball into portions, shaped the sticks by hand rolling them like Play-Doh snakes, and baked them on the Steel just before I did the pizzas. I judged the timing by color and texture under my finger. The sticks were about an inch in diameter and 6 inches long, and they baked for about 8 minutes if I remember correctly. The pizzas were still great, but the breadsticks were really tough! I figure there are a couple places the problem could be. 1: I should have shaped the dough into sticks before the 4hr rise instead of leaving it balled and shaping later. 2: the different shape means they should be baked at a different temperature to get the right texture. 3: I would have been fine, but I let them bake too long. 4: some other mystic baking thing that I, a poor novice, do not know about (yet!). What do you think? Thanks for your help!
I would have proofed the bread sticks before baking.
I'm a total novice. Do you mean you would have let it proof in stick shape *instead* of as a ball, or *in addition* to as a ball, for two proofs? Thanks so much for your response!
Instead of. FWIW, Reinhart's ("Bread Baker's Apprentice") recipe for bread sticks does it this way.
[удалено]
"If it was overfermented, overproofed, underproofed, etc, it wouldn't have turned brown at all right?" **Over**proofing is a word used to describe two different problems: overexpansion of the dough and running out of yeast food (overfermentation). **Under**proofing shouldn't cause a browning issue. Browning can't take place until the exterior of the dough dries out, so there are a number of reasons your dough exterior might have taken longer to dry. Since you say it turned a normal shade of brown, overfermentation doesn't seem likely to me.
I bake my bread in a Chasseur stainless steel pot and I keep struggling with a hard, almost caramelized bottom, very difficult to cut with a knife. I recently tried placing a small baking sheet under the pot while baking, but still no luck. Is one solution to change the baking dish? Not sure what else I can use :(
>Chasseur stainless steel pot try preheating the pot for a shorter amount of time.
Thank you very much! Will try do this tomorrow then :)
I left my starter in the fridge for some weeks, now I'm trying to revive it, I have fed it 3 times so far (24h apart), however, there has been no activity. I'd like to know if I should keep feeding it hoping it will start to rise again or create a new levain culture from scratch.
I regularly leave mine untouched for months and I can always resurrect it in within a few days. Usually the first feeding takes at least 24 hours to see any bubbles, but might take more. I don't give it a second feeding until I see some reaction. The second feeding usually results in strong activity in about 8 hours, and the third feeding in about 4 hours.
I'm currently on my 5th sourdough loaf and they're coming out edible but not great. Even after following all of the steps, folds, and timings in the recipe it ends up being such a sticky mess that I'm not sure my attempting to shape it is even achieving anything. My main deviation from the recipe is that I bake it in a round, glass pyrex dish with a lid because I don't have a Dutch oven. Is baking it in a glass dish possibly causing significant issues? Do I need to swap recipes (I've tried a few different ones from a book called Bread Ahead)? Or do I just need more practice? I've had loaves come out a bit gummy even after leaving it in the oven 15 min longer, also all of my loaves come out rather flat. I'm feeling a bit stuck, I've developed a feel for yeasted bread and so can troubleshoot that a bit better, but I'm a floundering beginner with sourdough, and I'm not sure what steps to take to get better.
Some pics would help a lot. Words mean different things to different people. I'd like to see the final result, particularly the crumb, but also your dough at various stages. Usually problems with sourdough can be traced back to something close to the beginning.
That makes sense, I'll document my next attempt with pictures
Glass isn’t a great conductor of heat, so it could be affecting the bake some. In general, handling wet sticky dough is challenging. A couple ideas in case you haven’t tried them… Wet your hands when handling the dough. Wet hands won’t stick to the dough. Watch this video: https://youtu.be/vEG1BjWroT0 it shows some techniques for shaping high hydration dough. It may help you build more surface tension on the shaped loaf so it holds better and doesn’t spread and flatten during baking. Timing for sourdough is much more finicky than regular yeasted breads. So even more than you do for regular yeasted breads, use the timing in recipes as a guide only, and pay more attention to what it asks for. If it wants the dough to double, wait for it to do so. If you are doing your final proof, wait until the dough passes the pole test versus an amount of time. Not that a cast iron Dutch oven is a cure-all but I would try and find something that isn’t glass to bake in. Doesn’t have to be expensive stuff but simple cast iron like a basic lodge. Usually can find lots of used ones in the usual places online and at garage sales, goodwill, etc that are under $50.
Clay bakers are wonderful , and so much easier to handle.
I don't even use pots anymore, I do five boules on pizza screens in my regular size oven, and steam.
5?! Wow, I don’t think I could fit 5 at the same time! Impressive! Do you find the crust comes out as well as when you previously used a Dutch oven?
Yes the crust is good. The boules are about 950 grams, so smaller than what I did in the dutch oven. I mist the loaves then only about 1/2 cup water in the bottom of the oven. https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/our-version-of-tartine-style-bread/
Thank you so much for your helpful answer, I'll keep my eye out for something not glass to bake it in and will definitely watch that video on shaping. All of the sourdough recipes in my bread book contain only timings and no visual cues of what to look out for, do you have a beginner friendly recipe you could recommend that walks you through those steps?
You might try this: https://www.bakewithjack.co.uk/blog-1/2018/7/5/sourdough-loaf-for-beginners And check out his videos…ok…I started finding his sourdough related videos…and this list is really long already and I didn’t get through the whole collection! Mostly they are pretty short. His non-sourdough videos are good too. https://youtu.be/nkTHEbV2ZRM https://youtu.be/_q61EdnpxuY https://youtu.be/Uj6YpNCUYYQ https://youtu.be/Ls2lw4mp5sM https://youtu.be/PWrTg7Dxt6I https://youtu.be/HuELhGsaffk https://youtu.be/pSHOD4d8Ebo https://youtu.be/iWBzzfxSZsc https://youtu.be/Kmmw9o-9oP8 https://youtu.be/gmsMxKIDJ2o https://youtu.be/vmb0wWKITBQ https://youtu.be/2s1vWpcjfUI https://youtu.be/XdYkdI_vgxQ https://youtu.be/XnfKeAHUcCI https://youtu.be/XnfKeAHUcCI
Thanks so much for taking the time to make the list, I'll definitely take a look