It's the happiest time of the year.....Follow

Yup. That's a pretty standard set of white bread ingredients. Are you having problems with the rise, or the taste? I'd recommend using warm water (room temperature really), not hot. Can try using warm butter or shortening instead of oil. Also, try mixing 2/3rds of the water, salt, sugar, oil and flour together first, and then mixing in the last 1/3rd of the water plus yeast in. Hot water will kill your yeast. Salt will kill your yeast. So having the first ingredients the yeast makes contact with be salt and hot water is probably not the best approach. Adding the yeast into the mostly mixed dough, with the salt being a very small portion will ensure that your yeast nomnoms on the flour and causes a good rise.

Also realize that the salt and sugar are (mostly) just about taste. They serve almost no other purpose in the bread making. Technically, the sugar can help "jump start" the yeast (similarly, salt content can slow down yeast growth), but my experience is that it'll do just fine with warm water and flour. Biggest deal is getting the ratio of water and flour just right. Even minor differences can be huge. In this case, since you're not baking the result, it's not as much of an issue, though. You just need some rise, but you aren't worried about whether you get enough (or too much and a collapsed top ). But if your texture seems "off", it could be because you're not getting the correct rise out of your dough.

Yeah. I've been playing at bread making lately. Can you tell?


Oh! Are you using bread flour or all purpose? That will make a difference.

Well, get to work on perfecting it. Chop chop!

I like making buns with 100% hydration starter. I do it on my stone inside metal cookie cutters. Really nice open texture, sort of like a sourdough english muffins.

I usually opt for a lower hydration mix when making the actual bread as you said, it's a giant pain in the ***.

What's your technique for the high hydration loaf?

Yeah. Having a feel for the dough is more or less an art form and why a lot of recipes will say something like "X cups of flour". They assume the person using the recipe will know the correct feel for the dough when kneading, and adjust the water/flour mixture as they go along. It's intended to be a starting point, not an absolute measure. As Smash says, using weight for your starting point is much more accurate (and more or less necessary if you're using any sort of bread machine btw), but it's still a good idea to learn the feel of the dough you're making.

As for the fry bread recipe, instead of using oil in the bread mix, use lard.

Fry bread actually has a kind of tragic history.

Still delicious. I've had it once and I've been jonesin' to have it again. Actually the only thing I am looking forward to when I travel back out to Brrrr Montana.

Edited, May 28th 2014 5:20pm by Catwho

Wow. Your flour must be really packed in or something (kinda precisely why weight is better). Good to see you're getting better results.

Reminds me of something my grandfather would say. He'd say, "I'm goin' upstairs to **** your grandmother." He was an honest man, and he wasn't going to ******** a four-year-old.