bread bakers - help needed

[alison77]

i'm trying to learn to make bread but have had a rash of unsuccessful recipes which, although i am following the recipe detail, have turned out terrible. the three most recent ones were:
no-knead bread, basic recipe - turned out hard and flavorless
pizza dough recipe from no-knead bread guy - same.
and pretzels - hard and flavorless

what's the trick to getting good bread? any newbie suggestions?

[HollyBearsMom]

I am so not a baker but the best thing that happenend to me was a bread machine and great cookbook- rustic European breads from a bread machine. The machine makes the dough, the starters, etc. I do the rest.

I make the most yummy cinnamon rolls, pizza dough, olive bread, foccacia, dinner rolls, sandwich bread, the works.

The machine makes it easy and gave me the confidence to work with with yeast dough.

Go for it!!!

[Hedgehog Mtn]

I've been making bread weekly for years and I have VERY little luck with no-knead bread. Kneading takes practice but in my personal opinion yields a much better product.

Kneading is hard work but if you have a kitchen aid or similar you can also do it that way.

My 2 best tips...try Vital Wheat Gluten. It's not a product I'm okay with using often because it is more gluten than flour naturally has and I prefer most foods in as close to natural as I can get them. For beginners it can help get a better product and you can use less as you get better. Tip 2 (and I highly recommend) find someone who you can visit with that has experience making bread, get together a couple times until you see/feel exactly what you are looking for. Bread is harder to learn from a book, experience or hands on practice is best.

Just my 0.02 but I'm self taught and it would have been WAY easier and faster for me if I'd had a mentor LOL

[hjrowan]

I have to second the Breadmaker - Father Christmas (DH) bought me one this year and it has been fantastic. I kept wanting to make my own but never got round to it, but in the two weeks since starting with the bread machine I haven't bought any bread from the store (at about $4-6 each) and have made about 6 loaves in the machine. The results have been excellent as well.

Sorry I've got no advice on making bread the old-fashioned way, Good luck!

[elanorh]

I'm another bread machine user but I made bread by hand for years and years. The bread machine makes it much easier (I don't have to plan my day around punching down dough) -- if you've considered one, go for it.

If you do want to learn how to make good bread dough, allrecipes.com has good tutorials on bread making (I've used their bagel tutorial). Check their site and you may find what your errors have been.

Are you checking to make sure your water isn't too hot/cold? Use a thermometer at first to get a good feel for that. Are you proofing your yeast (letting it sit in the warm water and begin to foam before adding it to your recipe)? This helps you know whether your yeast is good or killed by your water temperature .... No-knead breads often have different tastes/textures than a standard recipe which may be affecting things for you.

You may be adding too much flour - bread dough should be relatively sticky especially the no-knead ones (quite liquid in my experience even). Even when making standard doughs by hand, you want a dough which is smooth and silky on the outside, but not dry or rough. Knead in a little flour, not a lot. When they say, "like a baby's butt" they mean it!

Are you trying to make mostly whole-grain breads? I honestly think it helps to learn with a white-bread type recipe selection before moving on to whole grain breads .... it takes a more deft hand to do whole grain breads so that they aren't too dense etc.

Where are you getting your recipes? A good all-round recipe book for baking is the King Arthur flour one - I have an old Pillsbury baking cookbook that I use sometimes, and for whole grain breads, the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book is lovely. There are some really good bread books out there.

[cristeen]

Unfortunately, "hard and flavorless" is not very descriptive when trying to troubleshoot.

Did they not rise? Yeast could be old, water could be too hot, room could be too cold.
Did they rise just fine, but out of the oven were rocks? It might be over-kneading, temperature problems with your oven, or too much flour.

If you've never successfully made a yeasted bread product, then it can be hard to know what it should look/feel like at each stage. I'd suggest asking any friends who bake to teach you, take a class, or read up on what you may be doing wrong. Once you have it down though, it's pretty easy, IMO.

[425lisamarie]

I've been bread making a LONG time, I'm only making sourdough french right now. IMO no-kneed is a messy tough nack to get. It can be REALLY great, but if you over work it it will be terrible. What recipe did you use?

[MommytoB]

Hey I was looking for some information. I try to make bread too and it seems to look like okay bread on the outside but the inside never seems to get cooked.

I try a bread machine but all I get is very burnt and dry out bread .

When I did the yeast bread before it was white bread but nearly looked like a short french bread but that was a better turn out than the rolls I try to make .

[425lisamarie]

Originally Posted by MommytoB

Hey I was looking for some information. I try to make bread too and it seems to look like okay bread on the outside but the inside never seems to get cooked.

I try a bread machine but all I get is very burnt and dry out bread .

When I did the yeast bread before it was white bread but nearly looked like a short french bread but that was a better turn out than the rolls I try to make .

The recipe you are using will dictate the heat you need in the oven. Non-enriched doughs like french bread, etc do much better in a hot 500 degree oven or 500 then turn down to 450 as many do. Enriched doughs, like those with milk, butter or fat, eggs, sugar etc bake at a lower temp for longer because they have a soft crust. A baking stone is really essential for getting a superb crust, and also when you are baking at 500 it helps keep the heat in the oven.

What recipe are you using and how are you baking it?

[HollyBearsMom]

I never actually bake bread in my bread machine, just make the dough. I do the shaping and baking myself. This gives me so much more control and much better quality too.

For a non baker who had been intimidated by yeast recipes this has been a great starting point. I can now make all kinds of starters with confidence as well as make "complicated" recipes too

[alison77]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

One thing that I just learned is that bread flour and AP flour require different amounts of flour - I wonder whether that was one of my problems because I had been substituting bread flour for the AP listed in the recipes. For the pretzels in particular, the dough seemed fairly on the hard side (so hard that it was very difficult to knead), and I added a little extra water, but perhaps I should have added more. Otherwise everything seemed to have gone fine - rising was proper and timely, and cooking was just to lightly golden. They looked beautiful but just tasted so terribly!

One other question - when kneading the bread the recipes always state that it should become very elastic - just how elastic does this mean - for example, should I be able to stretch it like gum (this is probably an extreme example)? I have noticed that even after having kneaded the dough for like 15 min it was breaking a little bit when I pulled on it. What would I do to increase the elasticity of the dough?

cristeen - I wonder if your suggestions about over-kneading or too much flour were a problem (given the above two issues). I probably should also get an oven thermometer - I have no idea whether my oven is at temperature or not. They rose just fine and looked beautiful but were rocks to bite into.

The no knead recipe I have been working from is the basic one featured on the new york times website.

off to see if i can find a friend that bakes bread . . . so far i can't think of anyone!

[elanorh]

If you're kneading for fifteen minutes, your problem could be overdeveloping your gluten.

It's very rare that you should need to knead for more than 5-8 minutes. Try to knead just about the middle of that - 6 1/2 minutes or so - adding as small an amount of flour as you can during that time (just enough to keep it from sticking to your hands). Because it could be from adding too much flour as you are kneading things, too.

In terms of elasticity - mostly they mean that when you knead it or pull at it, it should pop back into position relatively well (not perfectly, but it should spring back).

Also if you're wondering how to tell if it's ready to go in the oven, poke lightly with two fingers. If an indentation remains, it's ready. If it pops back up, then it can still raise more before going into the oven.

If you have a Facebook page, and very many local friends, maybe post something in your status about looking for someone who bakes bread and wants to 'tutor' you? You might be surprised by who knows how to make bread.

[425lisamarie]

It's VERY hard to over work the gluten structure of dough. What usually happens is that when you need by hand you add too much flour because it is difficult to kneed sticky dough.

There is a REALLY good website with a video tutorial on the no kneed at breadtopia.com. I think he does a really good job of showing how you have to handle the dough very little and put very little effort in to the spreading the dough out and shaping part. If you go to that website find the basic no kneed video.

There is a term called the "window pane" test to see if your dough is elastic enough. Basically take off a tiny little piece like the size of a quarter and stretch it slowly. If it stretches very thin and you can see through it you're good, if it tears while still thick you have more kneeding.

The best way to kneed especially by hand is to kneed for one minute until the dough is all together, then cover the dough and let it rest about 15 or 20 minutes, then do your kneeding. And 8-10 minutes by hand is not un reasonable. I set a timer for 4 minutes and I have the professional kitchenaide model and sometimes it needs even a minute or two more.

Are you baking with steam? It will keep a good crust/moist interior. Put a pan of water under the rack you bake on and quickly pour a cup of water in and shut the oven door right when you put your loaves in. Also make sure you preheat your oven a good 20 minutes.