Bread Baking Tips
Source of Recipe
Professional baker Karl Bouvin
Recipe Introduction
Professional baker Karl Bouvin offers tips on how to bake your own bread...............As seen on TIPical Mary Ellen
List of Ingredients
The next time you're baking bread, make a double batch. Take the extra dough and make homemade breadsticks or pretzels. Children love them!
To guarantee the freshest possible bread, use the freshest ingredients. Use fresh stone-ground flour made from wheat kernels. Purchasing from the grocery store, local co-op or health food store in the bulk food area is cost effective.
Check with the store to find out how often the flour is purchased. Shop at the store that buys in small batches. This ensures that the flour is fresh. Buying in bulk rather than buying pre-bagged items will guarantee a fresher bread.
If you do make bread with bagged whole wheat flour, you could use one tablespoon of gluten per loaf. Gluten makes your bread softer and firmer, improves shape and causes it to rise higher. There is no need to use gluten if you are using high- protein flour, however.
Try to buy cake yeast (sometimes called moist yeast), which can be found at grocery stores and most health-food or co-op stores. The cells in cake yeast are nearly 100 percent active. By contrast, dried yeast cells are not all active. A good yeast makes for a more consistent loaf.
The yeast should be mixed with water that's a little warmer than lukewarm, registering 105 to 110 degrees, before being mixed into flour.
Think about the overall temperature of the dough you are creating. The dough temperature should be about 80 degrees. The higher the temperature, the faster it rises. Quickness is not always the best. A nice slow rise, if you have the time, is the best, but it's not always practical.
Check the temperature of your ingredients and dough with a quick-read thermometer, which can be purchased from a grocery store.
By kneading the dough, you are causing the gluten in the dough to soften up and turn into strands. If you don't have a lot of arm strength, knead the dough gently for 15 to 20 minutes. If you are stronger, aggressively knead the dough for about 12 minutes. You can then shape the dough into round loaves or other shapes.
For a crispier crust, add moisture to your oven by preheating a cast-iron skillet and pizza stone on the bottom of your oven for up to an hour before baking. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. As you put the bread in the oven, drop some ice cubes into the skillet. This will result in a steamy oven, which in turn will give you a great crisp crust.
If you like lighter crusts with less crispiness, spread butter or oil onto the loaves.
Allow bread to cool at least eight to 10 hours before bagging in plastic. Otherwise condensation will occur, which will make your bread too moist to eat.
Do not store bread in the refrigerator. The sugars contained within the bread will crystallize in the refrigerator and cause the bread to dry out. The bread should last for a week or so at room temperature.
After the bread has cooled and you have double-bagged it in plastic bags, you can freeze the bread for up to 30 days. You may also freeze dough for future use.
Recipe
A SIMPLE TIP for changing the flavor of your bread or to make a specialty type of bread is to use a different type of flour. If you have a basic bread recipe that calls for 3-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, replace it with 1-3/4 cups whole wheat or rye flour mixed with 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour. Or, use 3/4 cup oat flour with 2-3/4 cups all-purpose flour. Another option is to try 1/2 cup of soy, millet, corn, rice, buckwheat or barley mixed with three cups all-purpose flour.
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