/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>5071799
It can replace kneading entirely.

You should be kneading until you reach windowpane for a lean dough. I don't know about hooking. You should ask your mom about that.

Bigger bubbles are the result of a bunch of things. You want high hydration, high gluten, high heat for big fat bubbles in your crumb. Make sure to knead until windowpane.

Bread's the worst. Ugh. So gross.

>>4857507
Nuts take on a pretty different character in a loaf of bread. Walnuts, especially. They become softer and sweeter, which is part of why I like putting them in sourdough loaves so much. They help to balance the tartness.

>>4857512
Just get started! It's all about practice and experience. Pick a simple recipe (read: one with only flour, water, salt, and yeast), and start getting a feel for each of the steps. In general, you'll want to make sure any recipe includes mix, ferment, shape, proof, slash, and bake steps. Otherwise, just have fun. The no-knead recipes are great because they are easy, and they teach a valuable bread lesson: it's all about taking your time. You can mix flour, salt, and water together to a mixture that you like, then add however much (or little) yeast you like. So long as your'e willing to wait till the dough reaches the appropriate volume for each of the steps, it's still going to make rocking bread (which is why the no-kneads take 18+ hours, while many other recipes only take 4).

>>4857545
Los Angeles.

>>4592020
Well, gluten development requires mechanical energy input. I'd say from your slow fermentation that you could probably treat it like a no-knead bread, though I would probably still knead a fair amount. Experiment with it and find out what works for you.

I never use a second rise. Just bulk ferment, shape, proof, bake.

>>4025876
Also, sweet kukri.

>>3993323

Very nice. Sounds like great flour. I've been trying to locate another supplier for bulk artisan flours here in Los Angeles since the last one was purchased by Sysco (boooooooo). I like Central Milling's catalog. How much did it cost to have the bag shipped?

Your breads always have the best crusts. Looks delicious.

http://youtu.be/MJGqSC2RpD8

YouTube finally didn't fuck me. Let me know if you guys have any questions.

I know it's super long, but I think that it accurately represents how I make my bread. I probably could have spent more time on preshaping and shaping, but it's too late now.

>>3857136

I, for one, am not trying to force another bread lover out of /ck/. I'm just expressing my moderately educated opinion. It might help lend credence to your advice if you were to post a few examples of your bread baking (like I've been doing with a handful of my posts).

Am I master baker? No, definitely not. I do, however, bake bread well enough to have been hired to consult for a small handful of medium- and large-format bakeries, and have standing orders from about 15 different people any time I bake large batches. I also have a degree in food chemistry, with a lot of time spent in a cereal chemistry lab (read: bread lab). We could, for example, have a really intellectual conversation about why it's not smart to use greased hands to knead bread in which you're trying to develop gluten.

Stick around, or don't. It's no big deal to me. Just don't get butthurt when people try to share their personal experiences to temper your own.

>>3852720

Looks great for a first loaf. If you want to expand the crumb and make it less dense, cut out the fat and make sure to develop sufficient gluten.

>>3828462

Semolina tends to help the loaf retain moisture, and makes it a little more dense. I've been making big, airy loaves recently, so I wanted something a little more sandwich-friendly.

The scoring on the left loaf is how I usually score my bread. Unfortunately, because there was less gluten development in these loaves due to the whole wheat, semolina (which is high protein, but doesn't seem to contribute to overall gluten development in the dough), and walnuts, it didn't bloom as intended. I attached a picture of another loaf I made that had a proper bloom/grigne.

I use percentages because they are infinitely scalable. I can just measure out however much I have of the limiting ingredient, and work the rest of the recipe around that. If I want to max out the quantity of dough, but am short on salt, for example, I can measure out my salt, divide by 0.035, and figure out how much flour I'm going to use to match. The rest of the calculations follow similarly.