Bread wont rise

[Berti]

hip hip YUMMY! congrats to you! keep going and never look back ........
berti

[Big Al]

I've not read all the topic but here’s my slant on things bread making.

650g very strong white flour
400mls tepid water (47deg C)
1/2 ounce of fresh yeast
1 1000mg vitamin C tablet
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar.
15 g of marg / lard / white flora

Add the salt to the flour in a bowl. Rub in the marg or fat.

Take the water and add to it the yeast, sugar and vitamin C tablet. Let it froth away.

Add this liquor to the flour and mix

Remove from bowl and knock the life out of it.

Place in bowl and cover with cling film. Leave to rise for 30 minutes.

Put dough on bench and beat it again. Make into buns or loaf shape and then put on a tray covered with a damp tea towel. Let rise for 20 minutes. Half way through this 20 mins light oven and warm up on gas mark 7 or GM 6 for fan ovens. (Conversions are in good cookbooks or on web for electric etc)

After the 20 mins is up put in oven on top shelf for 15 mins for buns 25 mins for loaf.
The base should sound hollow when tapped if it is ready. When it comes out of the oven brush the crust with marg or butter to soften it and leave to cool. Hot bread will give you massive indigestion.... well that's what my mam always said.

Another version is to use same ingredients but mix as you do for dough in the bread maker. Saves the aches and pains in the neck / shoulders.
Also if you leave it in the bowl after mixing then put it in the fridge over night or for 24 hours then cut off a piece and cook this leaving the rest in the fridge it doubles in size. Dough made like this will last all week so you can do a large batch of twice the quantities and have fresh bread every day.

The more water you use the more open the crumb structure of the bread.

As a side thought I'm doing different tests for bread making on my blog and they are in the recipes bit. More recipes to follow asap.
HTH

Alan

[Mylovelyhorse]

What an interesting thread! It seems that everyone has their own different ways of working, which obviously work for them. I think that's the key - find a recipe/method that works for you, even if other people swear it doesn't work for them!

I'm in the 'no salt' camp myself. I make bread every other day (by hand, not machine), and chose to do that instead of buying shop-made bread, which contains quite a lot of salt. I know some salt is important in the diet, but I decided that I'd rather choose where it was added than have the shop add it for me. Not having ANY salt in bread does taste a little different to start with, but it absolutely does not affect the rising/baking of the loaf. I've heard it said that no salt can result in a very pale loaf, but that's never happened to me.

I use Dove's Farm yeast. I don't bother mixing it in water/sugar first, as in my experience it hasn't made a lot of difference to the final loaf.

My recipe is:

350g of wholemeal/granary flour
200g of strong white flour
1 heaped tsp dried yeast
1 tsp sugar

Mix all of that together in a bowl, add a good slug (2 tblsp?) olive oil, plus as much warm water as you need to make the dough workable. I knead it for around 5 mins. My experiments have found that making the dough a little on the wet side (so it's nearly sticking to the worktop, but not quite) is best for me. I leave it to prove until it's doubled in size (this really does vary, anything from 45 mins to 2 hours). Then I knead it again for a minute, put it into a greased/floured loaf tin, and leave it for around 40 mins. I then bake it at 200 C, for 30 minutes (though I think the tins I use are very conductive, so some oven/tin combinations would probably take longer).

Very easy. Very lovely. I just love the fact that I know exactly what's gone into my bread!

[Shirley]

Hellsbells - I love the look on your face in that last photo!

My worst disaster with the bread in my breadmaker was when I forgot to put the water in

[Annpan]

That bread looks beauiful Well done!!!




My worst breadmaking disaster - the paddle was left down .... doh!

[pureportugal]

yay! the bread looks brilliant

[Helsbells]

mmmmmm its very yummy,
Hot dog sarnie tonight!

[Bramble]

Hi Rosendula

I just made a loaf using your advise.. brilliant! thanks :)

I was on one of my rants to OH the other day on the subject of bread. Like you, my bread was always rock hard and I gave up even trying to make bread for many, many years. I was always told I wasn't kneading it enough, or not kneading it hard enough, that I'm too light-handed. I knew that wasn't the case. I was not just kneading it, I was beating the sh!t out of it! (Sorry, couldn't think of a polite way to put it). The recipe I was using was the one I was taught at school - using fast-acting yeast - and that, I believe, was the problem. So try this: get your so-called 'fast acting' yeast, and put it in about 750ml of warm water with a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Give it all a good stir and leave it for a while.

When it's started going nice and frothy, mix in a load of flour until it's like a stiff paste. Put a wet cloth over it and leave it somewhere warm overnight.

*Next morning, take out half a cup of the dough and put that in the fridge*

Add 4 level teaspoons of salt to the bowl, stir well, then add more flour until you have a proper bread dough consistency. Kneading it does help, but isn't really essential if you can stir it well enough. Put this dough into tins, no more than 3/4 filling it. Cover with a wet cloth and leave to rise until doubled in size (or until it looks like it's going to spill over the edge). Then put it carefully in a preheated oven. Don't bang it, or it will collapse and cook hard. I don't know temperatures, but mine goes in on gas 7 for 20 minutes followed by gas 5 for 15 minutes.

* Next time you make bread, forget the yeast. Take the cup of (sour-) dough out of the fridge in the morning. Mix that with the warm water and sugar and leave overnight, just like you did the yeasty water.


Edited the amount of water - mixing up my fl.oz and ml.