Wheat Bread
I made wheat bread on Sunday. After my mild successes, I guess I was bound to get served a good lesson.
Weight is more important that volume. That finally hit home when I measured out the flour only to find 1 1/2 cups on Reinhart's flour is equal to 1 cup of my wheat flour. I was following his recipe blindly and ended up with an unsalvagable mess. Or at least, I thought it would be to much effort to salvage. Started over. Much better the second time.
I also learned, I absolutely suck at kneeding dough. I'm going to have to try a different method. The French fold, the streach and fold, or maybe I could try using the dough setting on my bread machine. Or, I buy a mixer.
Has anyone had any success making just the dough in a bread machine? Can I mix it by hand and then throw it in the bread machine to slap it around a bit? Or would I really just have better success with one of the folding methods?
In the end, the bread did turn out pretty tasty. I still need to work on shaping and also understanding how much dough needs to go in my bread pan.
Coming soon... Cornbread!
Comments
Scubabbl, I use the bread machine to knead virtually all my doughs that aren't no knead. My Kitchen Aid is only one step up from the classic and I just never could seem to get the hang of bread in there.
I use it for all my sour doughs, ciabattas, bagels, rolls, buns, rustic, flat breads, about everything that says to knead. I use it for Peter Reingart's recipes.
When I make sour doughs I just put in the overnight ingredients and run the machine for 5 minutes and turn it off. The next morning, I add the remainder of ingredients and turn it on. I watch to make sure everything mixes and let it do it's thing on the dough setting. If the bread needs more time to rise I just let it stay right in the machine until it is ready. Once it has reached the point for shaping I just pull it out and proceed as though I had kneaded it and let it rise.
I have used my machine every couple of days for the past 17 years. It is an old Regal and they stopped making this machine long ago. Everytime I turn it on I wonder if it will even be able to move the dough. I also have a Sunbeam from Walmart that I use when I need more bread at once. I have never baked in that one though, just mixed.
Some people probably think that is cheating but it makes for beautiful, tasty bread.
try this video - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5803/kneading-and-folding-re-edit-video
It helped my kneading technique