NICE! Just got into bread making!
After recently trying a delicious slice (followed by half the loaf) of some homemade wheat bread using home milled flour, and also learning how tremendously nutritious it is, I had to get in the game for myself. Bread/baked goods are my favorite foods in life, and it feels amazing being able to make delicious, healthy bread anytime I want! Now onto learning more recipes and how to utilize different wheat berries, etc.
That slicer!!
I’ve baked a few loaves now, and I’ve moved on to trying variations on the third one from this recipe page:
I’ve been trying different combinations of flour, as I’d still much prefer to make wholemeal style bread than something purely from white/plain flour. I’ve been messing around with baking times and temperatures – I didn’t like the result from my first attempt with this one where I simply baked as written in the recipe. I think that was a little too hot, and spent a little too much time uncovered versus covered.
I have just taken a fresh loaf out of the oven, and it is sitting on the wire rack cooling presently. This is essentially a 50-50 split (actually 330g wholemeal to 270g bread flour, cause after measuring 300g wholemeal I saw I had only a small amount left so just put it in) between wholemeal and bread flour. Also, the wholemeal that I have is 11.6% protein so it is pretty close to the bread flour in that regard. I’m not ending up with a really slack and wet mess, thankfully!
I was really surprised by how far the scoring opened up while baking! This was just a small-ish + shape formed by a few snips with kitchen scissors in each direction, and it went and opened up all the way.
My idea there was to only score the dough a little bit, thus hopefully allowing it to spring/rise more by not venting steam quickly. I’m also hoping this will help develop a crisper/crustier crust. I’m happy to report that at least the first part of this was a success, my boule has risen quite nicely while baking. Tapping on the bread sounds good, and it feels crusty… I just need to wait a couple of hours and then I can cut in to it and find out how everything turned out.
Home baking is pretty fun and rewarding!
How’d it turn out??
The bread itself came out fine, but I still didn’t get the crust as crispy/crusty as I’d have liked!
Next loaf, I’m going to try spraying a bit of water in with my mist spray bottle thing. I’m baking in a dutch oven with a heavy lid that makes a good seal, so that should help the steam a bit. At least, that is the plan/hope.
Today’s baking effort, another boule. I don’t have a bread lame for scoring so I’ve just been using my kitchen scissors to make some cuts at a shallow angle to the dough. This one opened up more than I expected! I need to try and get more consistent with those cuts – or perhaps, eventually, buy the silly bread razor.
I’m just here to say I read this thread’s title as “The banking thread” and thought that was an interesting enemy of video games.
I made a brownie last weekend, this is the last of it. It’s a tried and true recipe and very delicious.
Currently eating a bit with cooked rhubarb and berries.
lmk if you want the recipe
Always happy to see recipes!
Maybe drop it over in The Insert Credit Cookbook (the recipe thread). Or here. Or cross-post to both, I’m not sure anyone will mind all that much.
I got my first proper “ear” today
It is currently cooling, so I have no idea what it is like inside.
Looks great!
Hopped up this morning and fixed biscuits for my partner on his first day of grad school.
Used the recipe from The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis, a fantastic book on traditional Southern cooking and some personal reflection about her life as well.
Used Crisco rather than lard (ok fine) and had to use oat milk instead of sweet milk or buttermilk (tragic) but I’m delighted with the result. Served with black coffee and corned beef.
I made my first seeded loaf today. I bought some mixed seeds from the nut shop at the markets – it has poppy, sunflower, linseed, pepitas, and sesame.
I didn’t get my hydration calculation quite right, but it still came out alright. A few things to tweak and change for next time… baking is a constant process of learning, it seems.
