zircona1 wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 9:29 am
Anyone here bake bread?
I baked some this weekend. Tastes great, but the bread isn't that soft, it's chewier than I prefer. I've used this recipe 3 times - with bread flour and AP flour - and it always turns out the same. By the end it's like I'm sawing through wood. Any tips on how to make bread softer? I do use a digital scale to get the measurements exact.
https://www.seriouseats.com/simple-crus ... ead-recipe
Hello!
There are two aspects of this process that are adding moisture to the air around the loaf: cooking in a Dutch oven (traps the steam that escapes from the loaf) and spraying the oven with water vapor. Adding moisture makes the crust much tougher. Also, this recipe is basically for a sourdough boule but using commercial yeast. It feels like it's trying to go in two different directions at once. This feels like someone trying to create a nice loaf to go with some olives, cheese, and a glass of wine or something.
This isn't really sandwich bread, is what I'm saying. You want something you can put peanut butter or chicken salad on, you need something you can bite without losing a tooth.
Sandwich bread is much less fussy and you get to make it in a loaf pan. My recipe is as follows:
1.25 cups hot water
1 cup milk
3 tsp dried yeast
4 cups of bread flour
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 tbsp salt
1/3 cup of oil
two eggs
1/4 of honey/molasses/sugar (optional)
1 tbsp olive oil
In a large bowl, combine water, milk, and yeast. Let stand until yeast has dissolved.
Add sugar, flour, eggs, salt, honey/sugar/molasses, and oil. Stir to mix.
Once you have a shaggy dough that isn't sticking too badly, dust your counter with flour and turn the whole mess out. Keep adding pinches of flour until the bread isn't sticking to the counter. You want the dough to be just dry enough not to stick but no drier.
Work the dough for ten minutes or so, folding it under itself to lengthen the gluten fibers. Once it's silky looking and has gotten a little stiffer, clean out your bowl and put the tbsp of olive oil in the bottom.
Place your dough ball in the bowl, flip it over, and cover the surface with olive oil. This is just to keep it from sticking to the bowl.
Cover and let stand for two hours. The dough ball should increase its apparent size by 3/4 or so. If your kitchen is cold, it may take a little longer.
Grease two loaf pans. Butter is awesome, but you can also use olive oil and flour or cooking spray.
Dust your counter again and roll your fat dough ball out and punch it down. Knead for ten minutes.
After ten minutes, split your dough ball in half, then divide each half into three. Work each of the three chunks into a rope. Braid each set of three into a loaf and drop it into your greased pan.
Preheat your oven to 375º F (190º C) and let the loaves rise for 30-ish minutes, until the loaves are peaking over the edges of the pans.
Bake for 33-35 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is.
Cool outside of the loaf pan on a baking rack.
SUBSTITUTIONS:
You can make this recipe without milk, substituting more water if you want to make it vegan. You can also use 3/4 cup of aqua faba (bean water) in place of the eggs. Bread flour is recommended because of its high gluten content, which allows the loaves to rise more, but. you can use AP if you want. It makes a nominal difference.
The 1/4 cup of honey/molasses/sugar isn't something that flavors the bread so much as it gives the yeast something to eat. Yeast likes sugars! Also, honey and molasses will both add a little extra color to the loaf. 1/4 cup isn't insanity.
I failed out.