I need advice with my bread making

[oldjerry]

It's a quandary.

Have you thought about putting the pickled onion at the other end of the sandwich?

Mike

Bloody Hell,never thought of that.I'll buy one straight away.

[Potter's Farm]

I baked a white loaf the other day and replaced about half the water with milk. It definitely made the bread softer, but still relatively heavy compared to shop bought stuff. Don't know how this would effect wholemeal though...

That's quite intresting....I used to use milk, but found that water made the loaf lighter!!

[Chants Cottage]

Well, I just had a look at the bit of the loaf that's left and it is now like a lump of so much tungsten... Makes cracking toast, mind. It wasn't really light and fluffy, just softer somehow and jolly nice when fresh. The crust was definitely softer (but kids still left it anyway). I know it's a completely different thing but I find adding a bit of water to houmous always makes it much lighter and fluffier, more like shop bought stuff...

[grahamhobbs]

Potter's Farm, sorry I have been away to comment on your recipe. Personally I would leave out the sugar, vinegar and oil, although a bit of oil is supposed to help the bread keep a little longer.
14g seems a lot but I assume you are not using dried yeast, otherwise your proportions seem fine. Your baking time seems short at 210degC but maybe your oven is very efficient. You could up the temperature to 230degC for the first 10 minutes and either mist the oven or put a tray of boiling water in the bottom, this will help give additional rise to the bread.
Assuming you are using decent bread flour, the only other thing is ensuring that you are kneading sufficiently. It's done when you can stretch out a piece of dough to form a small translucent window about 3" or 4" square without the dough tearing.
The other thing is good yeasted bread does go stale quite quickly, you can't compare it to the normal white sliced, which is full of chemicals and not much else. That's why the french buy their baguettes every day.
If you want bread that keeps a bit longer, you need to make sourdough or naturally leavened bread. As the rise is slower, and the slower you make it the more flavour it develops, it also means the kneading can be much gentler less critical, short periods of gentle stretching and folding every now and again, no big workouts.

[Potter's Farm]

Thanks Graham, since I've gone back to hand kneading the difference in my bread is incredible. I think i'd got lax with the kenwood dough hook and assumed the dough had been sufficiently kneaded without really checking.

I'm going to do a bake today, so i'll go back to bacics and leave out the ingredients you suggested above, thanks for the advice, Lisa.