/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>8867018

>>7895002
'Stickiness' doesn't mean much, you really have to keep track of the percentage by weight of liquid that goes into a dough, and the amount of liquid that goes into a recipe is the biggest factor in determining how open the crumb of the finished product will be.

>>7850333
>>7850376
Both of your breads are extremely dense, you need to add more liquid to the dough if you want them to expand nicely in the oven and have a more open crumb.

As for the leaven/yeast question, it really depends what you want to achieve - saving a little bit of dough from batch to batch works really well and is the simplest way to leaven bread as long as you're baking the same recipe on a regular basis. Sourdough starter is a culture you keep alive perpetually by feeding it with floor and water, it takes about two weeks to start one before you can reliably bake with it. Either kind of levain should be stored in a jar or crock. In the past, people carried sourdough with them in small bottles when they traveled. Under no circumstances should you put pack any kind of starter or dough in salt, this will kill the yeast.

More things everyone should know about bread

>>6879224
see pictured for guidance

>>6512271
This.

OP, if you want an open crumb, you need high hydration dough (>65%). Also, using high-gluten bread flour will help.

>>6512280
Yep, 50% is ultra dense sandwich loaf territory.

OP, three things:
1. Don't let anyone tell you that you need years of baking experience to make good bread. Pick a few recipes that sound good to you and make them a few times, after your first dozen loaves you'll understand enough of the process to make decent bread thereafter. There are a few areas where experience and judgement are needed, but don't let that scare you off because:
2. Bread (and baking in general) is a science. If you can successfully control the interaction of time, temperature, and the ratios of ingredients, you're 99% of the way to making good bread. Acquire a scale and read up on "bakers percentages" before doing anything else.
3. The usual faults of American bread, and what your foreign friend probably dislikes are these: too much sugar, uninteresting pillowy texture (not that this is always bad, but pretty much every sliced bread you find in a grocery store has the same exact tight, uniform crumb), and dough which is not allowed to ferment long enough for flavor to develop (unless it's bread sold as sourdough, in which case you can expect something overwhelmingly bitter).