Cooking with Jonny69: baking bread.

been using this yeast, and the two times i tried it didnt come out right at all
I've not had any success with that yeast at all. Instant yeast for me too.

If you have a Waitrose near you, this stuff is the same as you get in the sachets but work out cheaper and less packaging: http://www.waitrose.com/webapp/wcs/...661-Doves+Farm+quick+yeast.html?storeId=10317

(Doves Farm quick yeast if linky no worky)

Top tip: keep the tin from the Allinson stuff to put the Doves yeast into ;)
 
Doves yeast above and sainsbury's (comes in a box 8 sachets) own are the same thing made in the same factory just different packaging! :) The alinsons yeast you have been using is more like brewers yeast than bread yeast and I have also had poor results with it. If your local tesco/sansbury has an in store bakery then you can always ask for some fresh yeast. And moat small local bakerys will sell you a kilo block of yeast if you ask nicely ;)
 
Doves yeast above and sainsbury's (comes in a box 8 sachets) own are the same thing made in the same factory just different packaging! :) The alinsons yeast you have been using is more like brewers yeast than bread yeast and I have also had poor results with it. If your local tesco/sansbury has an in store bakery then you can always ask for some fresh yeast. And moat small local bakerys will sell you a kilo block of yeast if you ask nicely ;)

I buy my yeast (dried stuff anyway) from Lakelands. £1.20 buys you a small block of Doves which has much, much more in than those stupid sachets. I just keep it in a mini tupperware box, been doing this for a few years now for fast action. Good stuff.

I also have a sourdough but you really do get caught short sometimes, and with fast action I can go from nothing to loaf in less than 2.5 hours. I've used quite a bit of fresh from various places, and whilst nice, I don't find it gives amazingly better results than decent fast action, and isn't different enough as sourdough.
 
My very first attempt at baking bread! Was delicious. Great crust and soft spongy all the way through. Very happy. Plus had it with pulled pork and homemade red cabbage coleslaw which helped :)

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Turns out ciabatta is pretty easy to make and tastes fantastic!

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I had a go at making some bread a few days ago after reading this thread. I followed the instructions and it looked great but it had hardly any taste at all and was very chewy.

The only things I can think of that could have been wrong is that I used a full 7g sachet of Hovis yeast as the sachet said to use all, but I think a teaspoon would have been better.

The flour is Allinson premium extra strong flour, is this any good or should I get another brand?

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It looked and smelt like it was going to be really nice, but just tasted very bland and was chewy rather than soft and fluffy. It wasn't doughy either and had risen, so I cant understand why it wasn't soft.
 
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Lack of taste is usually down to a lack of salt. 300g of flour needs one heaped teaspoon of salt and 500g of flour needs just under two. If it was a bit rubbery, it sounds like you kneaded it enough but it might have been a bit too tight. Try letting it rise a bit bigger and bake it a bit longer. Looks pretty close to me though :)
 
Here's what I did:

375 g strong white bread flour
125 g semolina, plus up to another 200 g for dusting
5 g fast dried yeast
10 g salt
400 ml warm water
Olive oil

1. Mix the flour, semolina, yeast salt and water together in a large bowl, then add a good slug of oil. This will be a very wet dough, too wet for kneading. It needs mixing by hand or alternatively with the dough hook of a food mixer for 5 minutes.

2. Put the bowl in a plastic bag to ferment for 3 hours. Every half hour or so remove it from the bag, add a bit more olive oil, smooth it all over and fold the dough over itself a couple of times. Yes it's very sticky at first but it gets easier.

3. Don't have a baking stone or peel, I just sprinkle two baking sheets with a good covering of semolina.

4. Sprinkle the work surface with semolina and turn out the dough onto it. Separate into two equal lumps. Dust everything with semolina. Taking one lump at a time, flatten it and stretch it out into a rectangle. Roll this up into a cylinder four times as long as it is wide and place on the baking sheet to double in size.

5. Heat the oven to maximum.

6. Once risen, put them into the oven quickly, baking at maximum heat for 10 minutes before turning down to 200 ºC for another 15 minutes.

7. Remove from the oven, drizzle a little oil on top and allow to cool on a rack.
 
I'm on a gluten free diet this month. Does anyone know a good recipe for gluten free bread? I've got some of the Doves gluten free bread flour.

(£1.70 for 1kg compared to 60p for 1.5kg of normal bread flour, pffft)
 
Lack of taste is usually down to a lack of salt. 300g of flour needs one heaped teaspoon of salt and 500g of flour needs just under two. If it was a bit rubbery, it sounds like you kneaded it enough but it might have been a bit too tight. Try letting it rise a bit bigger and bake it a bit longer. Looks pretty close to me though :)

Thanks, i'll try more salt next time as I used 1 + 1/4 level tea spoons of fine sea salt so probably not enough for 500g of flour.

I kneaded it for 10 mins, then let it rise for an hour, knocked back and let it rise again for about 30 mins and then shaped it ready for baking. It did go a lot smaller when i shaped it, so maybe I should have shaped it then left it for another 30 mins. I'll give that a try next time as well as adding more salt.
 
I'm on a gluten free diet this month. Does anyone know a good recipe for gluten free bread? I've got some of the Doves gluten free bread flour.

(£1.70 for 1kg compared to 60p for 1.5kg of normal bread flour, pffft)
Make sure you purchase some xanthan gum.
 
Make sure you purchase some xanthan gum.

That's listed in the ingredients of the flour I've got :) What's it for exactly?

Ingredients:

Flour blend (rice, potato and tapioca), xanthan gum

Before thinking about this (different recipes for gluten free flour), I tried to make some gluten free bread following a normal recipe, obviously replacing the flour type.

It didn't go so well. The dough felt more like pastry, it didn't rise much at all, and when baked it had a 1 cm super hard crust and was... strange in the middle, like gummy. Still, edible :p
 
Great, will give it another go soon then :).

Do you just put a damp towel straight onto the dough for the final rise? I was letting it rise in the mixing bowl with a towel over the top of the bowl. But as soon as I get it out of the bowl and reshape on the baking tray it shrinks.
 
Do you just put a damp towel straight onto the dough for the final rise? I was letting it rise in the mixing bowl with a towel over the top of the bowl. But as soon as I get it out of the bowl and reshape on the baking tray it shrinks.
No, first rise is in the bowl with cling film over the top. Then shape it into a loaf and stick it on a floured baking tray and let it rise uncovered. Give it a couple of slashes with a really sharp knife just before you put it in the oven and it has somewhere to expand to when it pops up in the heat :)
 
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