/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>13150703
That sounds like a brutal curse to have.

>>13150707
It's my secret shame.

>>13150703
Are you using a scale?

>>13150723
No.

>>13150729
lmao

>>13150723
>>13150743
Lol I eyeball everything and my bread always comes out great, git gud scrubs

Honestly, I'm still pretty new at this but even when I'm having a bit of a disaster with the dough sticking to the banneton liner and it completely deflating and going flat as a pancake I still end up with a half decent loaf.

Just keep trying and practicing, you really can't go wrong. It's just 3 simple ingredients, flour, water and salt.

>>13150768
You forgot yeast, faggot.

>>13150774

Obviously, you make your own just from flour and water to make the best bread.

>>13150754
You are a fucking idiot; let me explain why. In order to become proficient in making bread you want to know what exact hydration levels do to your results in a given recipe. You will want to know what slightly different ratios of ingredients do to change a recipe. In order to experiment and learn you need to be able to precisely change given variables. You can't say experiment between 68% and 70% hydration by eye. You can't use exact rations of different flours with different protein contents. Sure you can make a loaf of decent bread by feel but you can never truly how to make your perfect bread or what exactly makes a given loaf more perfect than another. You also have no repeatability and can't share your recipe. Your statement "git gud" is akin to an ancient blacksmith telling a modern manufacturer to "git gud". Your shit is inferior, you don't know what you are doing, you can't learn, and you are a faggot.

>>13150786
t.was never taught to cook by a babushka

Same, fuck bread

>>13150786
I would like to echo the sentiment of this post. Anyone that has baked bread can eyeball or completely wing a recipe and it will be good. But it's a stupid way to bake when you can't replicate or fine tune the end product.

>>13150800
Sure but if all I want is a pretty decent loaf of fresh bread it's easier to just toss things together by volume.

>>13150800
>you can't replicate
But I can, I get the same loaf every time ñ. Now, YOU can't replicate my bread, and that for me, is based.

>>13150754
This, it's really not that hard.

>>13150703
That’s sad man, I make great bread and sell it to people I know. Don’t know what I’d do without it.

>>13150723
i never used a scale and i never had problems with baking.

>>13150703
Make sure not to overmix your dough if you're making quick bread.
If you're making real bread with yeast, make sure to knead it well, and let it expand in the fridge.

>>13150838
t. an Italian-American grandma, i.e. a fucking retard

>>13150838
no you can't faggot

>>13151317
whatever faggot

>>13150786
>signed, a dipshit with no baking skill

>>13150786
I just use measuring cups and spoons, this level of autism isn’t needed to bake some basic yeast bread.

>>13151508
How fucking retarded can you be? You will never accomplish anything with baking if you aren't even willing to admit a scale is a very useful tool . You won't accomplish anything in life with your fucking headstrong retarded attitude.

>>13150786
>You also have no repeatability and can't share your recipe.
Cook books didn't use to have measurements in them. They'd say things like "a good leg of lamb" and "some onions".

can you walk us through what you're doing? recipe?

>>13152230
He has no scale so no he can't lol

>>13150703
In my experience, you probably don't need a scale. The easiest to fuck up parts are the mixing, kneading, proving, and baking. Most simple bread recipes are pretty tolerant of slight changes to ingredient ratios.

Here's a sourdough loaf I made without strictly following a recipe.

>>13153321
That said, if you really want to isolate exactly what you are doing wrong, a scale is great. They're easier to use than volume measurements in many cases and critical for some recipes. Get a large one with 1 gram sensitivity, and a small one with 0.1 gram sensitivity or better.

>>13153321
>proving
proofing
like poofing for retardes

>>13153334
Ah yes that's correct, sorry.

>>13150703

The most important thing you need to know is you need to allow your yeast to die. That's called 'proofing' by most, but I call it yeast attenuation. Make sure all of your active yeast is dead and buried in your bread. Then you have something to work with that will taste good no matter how high it rises.

>>13151797
You went full retard over a 2% difference in water content. Slavishly adhering to a recipe is just as bad because it throttles your ability to adapt.

>>13153762
you can't measure percents and i never mentioned adhering to a recipe you idiot.

>>13153762

What kind of asshole can't walk up to a dough and see its ready to cook? 30-60 minutes you need to let it rise THEN you cook it.

Regardless..

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

>>13151875
I always use lots of lamb legs and onion somes in my bread

>>13153321
so the easiest part to fuck up is all of them?

>>13155031
>>cant measure percents
yeah the other guy's the idiot, mhm

>>13153321

No fucking way is that sourdough. It's clearly using commercial yeast and desu looks fucking awful.

Why would I ever bake a fuckin carb loaf? Who the hell is eating so much bread on a regular basis that they need to bake it? Same with pasta. Just go buy it from the store.

>>13155060
looks dry as fuck

>>13150754
It's probably because you're adding a high ratio of water to flour.

>>13151320
Why let it expand in the fridge instead of a warm place?

>>13155670
There's no commerciql yeast in that dough. I mixed starter with flour and water the night before, minus about two cups of flour. Then the next day when the entire thing was super bubbly, I added the final two cups of flour. This produces extremely active yeast, which yielded then great rise I got.

>>13156449
Longer ferment at lower temperature can impart more complex taste and better dough texture (but not always and effects can be too subtle to bother with longer ferment). More practical reason to do it is to slow down the final rise so that the dough isn't over-proofed when you have the time to bake. Dough being easier to handle when cold is also a plus, but depending on who you ask, you might want to wait for it to come back to near room temperature being put in the oven.

>>13156504
Thanks for the explanation anon!
I have to try it sometime.

>>13150703
Make sure all your work surfaces, utensils and hands are sanitary. If there are any good local bakeries, you should be able to ask about buying some starter for dough. I wouldn't want to bake egg-free bread at a temperature lower than 415.

I put in a little starter culture, mix it and leave it 18-24 hours on the counter, knead it, pinch it off into single serve sizes and bake at 415 for 25-30 min. Humans were baking bread before they were recording history, you can too with enough practice. Bonus points if you scribe cuneiform into your bread before baking for the authentic bronze age touch.

>>13155888

Dry? It's a bread boule. How can I help you?

>>13150703
Im sorry about that buddy :/ actually sad

What steps did you last take?

>>13150703
You probably overwork the dough, and add too much flour when kneading.

Hmm... I've been doing a lot of pizza lately, and my dough has been turning out great, but the last several times I've tried to do bread, it's fallen in the oven.

Thoughts?... er, helpful thoughts? lol. Forgot I was on the chan(nel) for a second.

>>13158341
Overproofing I guess? There should still be some living yeast when it goes in the oven if you want it to rise at all in the oven I think.

>>13158971
Yeah, I don't know. I know the yeast is good, since I've been doing pizza and wine almost daily lately. Overproofing would explain it, but the only way I can see getting around raising it to the volume of the breadpan would be increasing the batch size.

Maybe I'll give it another shot tomorrow, just seems stupid to me that essentially it's the shape of the dough that seems to be the problem.

Why not make quickbread fag

bump?

>>13158985
Are you using commercial yeast or starter?

>>13161920
Red Star ADY. I'll try increasing the volume by 50% and see how that works; I know commercial bread is whipped, and I'm not doing that, but it just seems like adding more dough to the pan would make it a lot more dense than I'm going for.

Since starter is wild yeast, is there a best time of year to capture it? Also, I'm growing a few herbs and tomatoes in soil in my kitchen; do you think a starter would be more likely to end up with soil molds in my kitchen, or is the media (flour) pretty much just conducive to sacchromyces and lactobaccillus?

>>13162401
I started my starter from dried starter I ordered, but I'd imagine fall is the best time for wild yeast in the air, since it's when everything is rotting. You can also go to a bakery and ask for a piece of their starter.

It's possible for other bacteria and mold to invade your starter, but unlikely with a healthy starter - the lactobacillus and yeast should outcompete any other organisms in a healthy starter, preventing mold and other bacteria from growing. If you leave the walls of the starter container dirty for long periods, mold can start on the mostly dry flour mixture stuck to the walls, and from there spread to the main body of the starter, since the dry spots on the walls aren't as conducive to yeast or lactobacillus. Other organisms can also invade if you leave your starter at room temperature and haven't fed it for too long. I've found no issues with contamination even after a month or two of ignoring a refrigerated starter, but at room temperature they will exhaust their food supply more quickly and be susceptible to other organisms while weakened.

I don't think the starter will contaminate your soil, at least not any more than the air normally would. The starter should be limited to just a few species of fungus and bacteria (primarily yeast and lactobacillus).I haven't checked under a microscope or anything, but my understanding is they suppress other life.

>>13162477
>dried starter I ordered
I'll check that out. I tried a capture a while ago before I got super into gardening, but with all the little critters that live in soil, I don't want to accidentally raise botulism instead of sourdough.
>my understanding is they suppress other life.
Yeah. Sacchromyces makes alcohols and lactobacillus turns alcohol into vinegar, so a yeast starter is a pretty potent little poison factory in regards to monocellulars, once it's a thriving colony.

I appreciate the input. One more thing, if you don't mind. Do you ever notice your hands keeping the vinegar-y smell long after kneading dough and washing up? As much as I like the idea raising starter, accidentally transferring lactobacillus on my hands when preparing a wine would be devastating to my homebrew habit.

Don't make bread then, make Tadik. Its fairly simple, just boil some rice for 35-50 minutes, add some oil before hand, and you got a decent size meal. Add some meat or anything you want really.

>>13162902
its just rice with a layer of crispy stuff which is the worst part

>>13162940
>The worst part

Its the best part if you make it right. Just add oil and don't let it burn.

>>13162962
eh, personally i eat rice for the soft sticky texture, i dont want it crispy. same with fried eggs, never understood it. the crispy stuff on the bottom clashes so hard with the egg texture.

>>13162969
Each to their own I suppose, I like both the crunch of the tadik and the softness of the rice. I add a bit of saffron/salt for flavor sometimes.

>>13162847
I haven't noticed such a smell persisting on my hands, but for other cases where something can't be removed with soap and warm water, I often use isopropyl alcohol, then another soap and water pass. Some things that aren't soluble on soapy water will dissolve in alcohol. I imagine other cleaners that aren't too damaging to the hands would work too, to either dissolve away or destroy whatever is on your hands (Windex / dilute ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, etc).

I'd you are worried about raising the wrong microorganisms, you can also let your (under investigation) starter sit for a week or two without feeding, less at room temp. The color, odor, and distribution of the liquid that builds up on top of the starter is pretty characteristic of the yeast/lactobacillus. There are many photos of healthy starters online to compare against.

>>13162999
And if you're very worried about cross contamination, you might want to use disposable gloves for the wine if possible. It's super annoying to work with dough with gloves on, so I'd use gloves on the wine side instead. Maybe also work on them a day or more apart, so any organisms from the starter that were kicked into the air / atomized from either the sink or cleaning dried dough from your workspace have settled.

That said, I don't think a starter would be much riskier on the hand or air contamination front than commercial yeast, which it sounds like you've been using without problems for some time.

>>13162999
I'm not terribly worried about the starter, but I'm pretty sure I'd recognize the smells of alcohol and vinegar anyway. Absolute worst case, I just toss it and start another. Assuming I get the falling dough bit figured, I could always just use the ADY anyway. In the mean time, I'm stuck buying commercial loaf.

>>13163032
>cross contamination
>I don't think a starter would be much riskier
ADY is just sacchromyces, it's the lactobacillus in the starter that would sour a wine. And I don't even know what I'd do with three liters of kiwi-strawberry vinegar right now, let alone 5 gallons when I pick up a carboy.

>>13150703
OP and anyone else interested in baking most types of bread (probably excepting really crusty ones) should incorporate a tangzhong AKA water roux into their recipe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2GWOHcEBcM
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2018/03/26/introduction-to-tangzhong

>>13163061
>it's the lactobacillus in the starter that would sour a wine
Ah, that makes sense. I don't think it's a huge contamination risk. I can't think of many vectors besides hands and air (via sink and dried bits on surfaces, like I mentioned last post), and as long as you aren't working on both at the same time and are maintaining good cleanliness standards, that shouldn't be more of an issue than the lactobacillus of the human body or the world around us.

Also: from reading Wikipedia just now, lactobacillus are extremely resistant to hydrogen peroxide, so remove that from the list of things that would probably help sanitize your hands.

>>13163064
Have you ever done it with sourdough?

>>13163064
based, dan is a true cooking chad. seen it on a couple other channels as well, milk bread looks unreal.

>>13155320
Yes he can't measure percentages of ingredients hes using relative to other ingredients without a fucking measuring instrument.

>>13153321
>>13153329
>>13153352
yikes

how do you fuck up bread? are you not needing it or something?

>>13164818
nah he only wants it

>>13163252
>that shouldn't be more of an issue than the lactobacillus of the human body or the world around us.
I hadn't considered that there's already some lactobacillus being introduced anyway. I haven't had any issues with it so far, so I may just be overthinking the situation.
>lactobacillus are extremely resistant to hydrogen peroxide
And alcohol, though I don't know offhand if there are certain concentrations that would be astringent instead of food for them. My understanding is that the idea with wine is to generate enough sacchromyces fast enough that the alcohol content is at the desired level before any colonization of lactobacillus can produce noticeable levels of vinegar, and then to pasturize the result to prevent subsequent colonizations. Some must always be present.

This really makes me wonder what the average success rate of wine making was when it was innoculated via wild-capture per each instance, given that sacchromyces and lactobacillus must have both been present in grapes and apples (the two primary fruits that sacchromyces colonizes).

When I was little, my dog used to jump the fence to get into the front yard where we had a crab apple tree. She never ran off, but on several occasions I found her stumbling around the front of the house after eating several partially rotten apples. The rates of colonization must be fairly different, then, if even under totally unsanitary conditions more alcohol is produced than consumed. I may be fine as long as I continue pasturizing the wine after bottling.

How can I make my dough more firm so it doesn't flatten out a lot when placed on a baking sheet? Less hydration more wheat flour perhaps? More kneading or shaping?

>>13165114
You can try kneading it in a way that leaves huge bubbles inside, maybe like a cap, with your fingers pushing from below towards the center, or something like that. It helps the yeast grow if I'm not wrong and air naturally generates pressure that bloats it up a bit more, though too much air may result in bursting bubbles on the surface, you have to make a few tests.

>>13165299
I'll give it a go, thanks anon.

What's your technique for kneading ?

Somehow I can't find a way to do it. The more I knead the less elastic the dough becomes.

>>13166534
do you use your hands?

My proofs never work. I think oven rise is a meme. More like oven slightly deflate.

>>13150703
If you are messing up everytime and not using a scale, then you need to use a scale until you are very experienced with baking and able to make good bread without measuring. Even if others in this thread can eyeball it, obviously you cannot.

>>13166546
Yes.

>>13162477
I wouldn't worry about when you start it. I've had a starter going for about 15 years now, and it changes over time anyway - both seasonally, and for god-knows-what reasons. I always imagine there is an entire yeast society in there, and sometimes is crashes and new people take over. I've smelled green apples, beer, general sourness, you name it. It's all good.

I'm useless with pretzels. Soggy garbage is all I can make

I proof my yeast and then toss a bunch of shit the bread 'chine, by feel.

>>13166534
There's a J. Oliver video where he says something along the lines of "Just stretch, pull, fold, press and mess with it". I like folding a lot by simply pulling out dough, without ripping it, and smashing it back in from all matter of angles.

My problem is how I only really gain decent elasticity with wheat flour so far. Everything brown doesn't work nearly as well.

>>13167151
Personally I strongly dislike the crust you get from similar means and devices. I've yet to go away from my dutch oven in this regard.

Now if that ain't your forté then a bread 'chine is still miles better than vast majority of bought bread.

I'm making sourdough starter in pic related. It's about 1 liter/33oz. Will the spreading out of the dough along the bottom cause problems?
The dough is about half an inch from the bottom and increasing a little as I feed it.

Currently it smells like I'd expect and there are small amounts of bubbles forming but it's also just day 3. The lid is on but not snapped shut so air can get inside.

>>13150703
make no-knead bread

>>13168934
You didn't attach a pic, but stirring your starter when you feed it is good for it. You want to always feed with flour/water mixture of your desired hydration, and thoroughly mix so your starter is always around that hydration.

>>13150786
Based and redpilled

>>13168956
Yeah I make sure to stir it or at least shake it around so it moves it all back and forth for a bit. I was just wondering if the shallowness of the dough would be a problem for the sourdough to form evenly across.

For those who worry about sourdough, I want to say that the water you use is really important.

I made sourdough bread quite a few times in the last years in different places as I was travelling. Recently I came back to my hometown and tried again.
The first time I used tap water that had waited for a while. The sourdough was weak and died after a few weeks.
The second time I used boiled tap water and got the same results.
I tried a third time but using bottled spring water, and it works much better.
I think it's because they treat my tap water with chloramine, which doesn't evaporate like chlorine.

And my best result with sourdough was obtained with water from a mountain stream a couple years ago. Pic related.

>>13150774
>buying yeast

Making bread again today. Made the levain early this morning and waiting for it to get nice and active. Really enjoy the slow process. It can't be rushed. Will finish making the dough this afternoon/evening and then let it sit in the fridge until tomorrow.

Had toast as well this morning from my previous loaf. I only have it once or twice a week so it's a real treat. It comes back beautifully from the freezer so each loaf really lasts.

>>13169128
Sourdough is nothing but yeast piracy.

>>13169446
>You wouldn't download a loaf

>>13169446
>>13169463
We're already on the verge of an Orwellian dystopia. Don't go giving the RIAA any new ideas.

>>13150703
It's chemistry anon, so cook by the book and measure everything.