I am an experienced home baker and make all kinds of yeast products regularly. But I never mastered making yeast rolls, hot cross buns and other small round yeast products to come out nice a neat looking. I think my dough consistency is right yet I get unsightly seams, gashes, cracks and crevasses in my final product.
How do you shape the balls to become flawless in appearance?
George (Author of What Recipes Don't Tell You)
of Back Home Bakery. He has some great videos (see video tab above) on shaping. Here's his video on [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6174/rolls-video][u]rolls[/u][/url]
Thanks so much, Lindy. This is a great video and exactly what I needed!
:-)In fact, Mark has a whole series on baking.
George (Author: What Recipes Don't Tell You)
Yes, Mark is a great baker and has gifted TFL with some of his excellent videos.
A number of TFL members have apprenticed with him and have blogged here about the experience. Got to be a morning person, for certain!
Thanks for the compliments. I'm only a morning person by default. If people wanted their freshly baked bread at 5PM then I'd be rolling out of bed a lot later than I do now.
-Mark
If your baking schedule ever changes, Mark, I'll wave my hand wildly to apprentice.
Bakers have my deep respect, not only because of what they create, but because they have to wake up so early to do it.
Maybe it's because I've always been a morning person, but, I get up at 4am to be at work baking at 4:45. However, I'm home and showered each day by 3pm which leaves me with a LOT of day left to play with. I love this schedule!
Night bakers I can't comprehend....
Larry
i was going to suggest marc videos also, otherwise, you can do the exact same thing he does, but using one hand as your benchtop the other to roll and shape. though you could only do one at a time this way. but with practice you get really fast anyways, and its good when you don;t have the bench space:)