What are some good fundamentals for becoming a great baker? My goal is to be able to bake sandwich loaves with great variety without having to read a recipe.
Are there some simple ratios I can memorize, like the parts of water per parts of flour?
Depends on what kind of bread you're making. Many recipes will have baker's percentages to make it easy to scale them up or down. There are other things you need to learn like how to mix the dough, how to let it rise and not overwork the dough.
>>7281006
this and also you want to get it hot or else it wont turn into bread
Find a good supplier for flour and eggs, buy an high quality oven that maintains heat, and practice recipes a lot with minor variations each time.
Having friends as taste testers is a plus as well. No one turns down sweets till you fuck it up.
Being able to suck cock is usually a sign of a skilled baker
>Water/Flour 0.55-0.75
>Yeast/Flour 0.001-0.01
>Salt/Flour 0.01-0.02
That covers every normie bread in existence.
Why would you want it though?
>>7280999
So to you "great" means having memorized it?
Based on what? Top Scar?
>>7280999
>bake something
>work out how it could improve
>bake it again
work out how it could improve
>bake it again
over and over and over. then bake something different.
>>7280999
Divide your loaf tin into four quarters. Then put a different flour/water/yeast/salt/other combo in each corner. Bake for 25 minutes at 220 degrees celsius. That way you get to try out four loaves at a time, to see which combinations work and which don't.
Within a month you'll be a master baker.
>>7281449
Moderate chuckle
>>7281449
baking in a smaller container with a lid (like a roaster) preserves steam and will enhance the quality of your crusts
you can even include a little ramikin of water to really blast that shit to the max
>>7281430
Ok, take for example this for example
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/honey-oatmeal-pain-de-mie-recipe
I didn't have a pullman pan so I used a normal 9 inch bread pan. The bread was tasty but didn't rise enough. Was my pan too large for this recipe, or does the pullman type pan make that big of a difference?
I've also tried making this in the past
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-sandwich-bread-recipe
but it comes out cakey
>>7281039
Can you elaborate? I don't understand those numbers. What would the volume by weight be for the water, flour, yeast, and salt for a basic white bread loaf?
I just want to perfect the most simple loaf so I have a base to modify off of. I keep trying different loaf recipes and they never come out perfectly, and I'm not sure if it's the recipe, or the moisture/temp of where I live, or if it's just my messing up.
Most of the recipes I've tried call for all kinds of extra ingredients including eggs, butter, sugar, etc, so I think cutting down the ingredients to just the required (flour, salt, water, yeast) would eliminate a lot of variables
>>7282154
Those are the ingredients to flour ratios by weight.
A typical sandwich bread would be something like this:
Water 60% of flour weight
Salt 1%
Yeast 1%
Sugar 2%
Oil 2% (sandwich bread needs fat)
The rest of it is good technique but it shouldn't be too hard with sandwich as it's supposed to be a simple and straightforward process.
>>7282347
Thanks, baker anon. I'll give this a shot today
>>7282101
You most likely didn't knead it enough, didn't add enough flour or let it rise too long during the final fermentation.
>>7282413
I let it rise for 1hr in a bowl, punched it down, then let it rise for 1hr 20m in the pan, just until it rose 1" above the 9x5 inch pan
What's a good cook book for bread?
>>7282473
Thank you!!
Any tips for learning how to knead/etc properly?
>>7282484
It's easier to kneed if you let the dough sit for 10 minutes or so after mixing it all together.
If you have a very wet dough and a long fermentation period (refrigerated or with little yeast) folding the dough a few times is enough.
>>7282524
My problem is more "I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing with my hands"
you're very helpful anon, thanks again. if you've got any other books to recommend I would appreciate it
>>7280999
Related, can anyone direct me to understanding the alchemy that is sourdough bread?
>>7282473
Talk about yeast infections
>>7282551
Kill yourself.
>>7282369
I thought it was funny.
>>7282539
Check out Youtube.
get a digital scale. it makes everything a snap.
Bake using a starter. I dump about 600-700 grams of starter into a bread-machine pan (sitting on a zeroed digital scale), then add enough flour to bring the hydration down to a proper level, like 50-60%, then let it knead in the machine for 30 minutes, dump it in a bread-pan, cover it with a little oil and plastic wrap, and let it rise for 3 hours. Then into the oven for 40 minutes at 350. When there's 10-15 minute left, I put a little tin foil 'hat' on the bread to keep the crust from getting too hard.
The leftover start goes back in the fridge. When I want to make more bread, I add a bunch of flour and water to build up the starter, and let it ferment on the counter overnight.
>>7282550
Leave the bread out uncovered and it'll get a yeast infection so you don't need to add any yeast. It'll also get a load of other bacteria and shit, and between that and the fact that wild yeast hasn't exactly been bred for its neutral flavour profile your bread will taste funky.
>>7282369
>I have no sense of humor
>>7282539
Whatever works, all you're trying to do is stretch and mix the dough. Look at what a bread mixer does, it just blindly twists the dough around and it works fine.
For really wet doughs you can drag lumps towards you with your fingertips and then push them back in to the main body. More sticky dough you can slap against the bench then pull up like a giant wad of gum. Solid dough you can grab one end and push the other end away with your other hand, or smush it out against the surface with the heels of both hands. Once it's almost ready you can even swing the whole thing around like a nunchuk to stretch it.
>>7282347
>>7282359
Here's the result.
I used
13oz of King Arthur bread flour
2oz salt
2oz yeast
3oz sugar
3oz extra virgin olive oil
8oz water
First rise was for 1hr in a bowl coated with olive oil to prevent sticking
I then punched down the dough and transferred it to a lightly oiled 4.5"x8.5" USA bread pan
Second rise was for 1hr
I baked in the preheated oven for 32 minutes at 350F
Waiting for it to cool down before cutting into to check the crumb.
It still didn't rise quite as much as I wanted, any ideas on what I'm fucking up?
>>7283437
I forgot to add, I kneaded the dough in a stand mixer w/ hook attachment for 10 minutes at low speed
>>7282594
I was perfectly capable of sensing the humor. I simply happen to also be capable of discriminating between good and bad humor.
>>7283460
Lighten up, if you take life too seriously it'll play a big joke on you
>>7283437
The crumb turned out pretty good, the crust is crisp, but not hard. It tastes like white bread, so overall this is a great starting point, I just need to figure out my rise problem.
Am I kneading for too long or not long enough?
Do I need to knead at higher speeds?
Do I need to spend more or less time on my first and second rises?
Is punching the dough down bad for rising?
Is my oven not hot enough?
Do I need to bake for longer?
Do I need to cut vents into the top of the loaf before baking?
>>7283437
>>7283489
Nice, it looks well risen to me. If you want it to spill out of the form some more you could use more dough.
Or use warmer water, a wetter dough or more time.
Poke it with a finger during the second rise to see when it's ready to bake.
The indentation should sowly but not completely disappear in a few minutes.
If it doesn't you overproofed.
>kneading
Hard to tell from pictures, it's hard to overdo it though so maybe try some more next time.
>punching down
No
>baking
I would bake it hotter to get more color on the crust.
>vents
That helps a little with oven spring, along with a hotter oven.
>>7283630
Thanks, I'll try again with slightly more dough, I want the loaf to look like this, with the big dome on the top.
I'll try the poking the bread next time to check if it's proofed enough, I've never done that before. I'm guessing overproofed bread will stop rising before it gets into the oven?
>>7284541
Yeah, it's about picking a moment where the yeast has produced a good amount of gas but isn't exhausted yet.
If you overproof the bread won't grow much in the oven and if you underproof weird stuff like blowouts, big holes with a tight a crum and crust that doesn't brown well happens.
>>7283437
bread doesn't suffer from being baked for a long time. get your crust to a color of your liking, that looks a little light to me. For a white bread you want a deep golden brown, wheat get's you the deep dark brown color.
If you wanna take a good photo, use more dough, and brush the top with melted butter after pulling out of oven, it gives it a nice shine.
>>7283489
also this crumb for me is too airy for a sandwich bread. you want a tight but not dense crumb. From the looks of the photo you overproofed it, which caused the airy crumb. this is why it didn't rise in the oven much since your yeast was already full and gassed out. You typically want 1 lb of dough to go into a 8 x 4 pan or 1.5 lbs for a 9 x 5. very good start tho anon, best of luck.
check out thefreshloaf . com if you really wanna get into a bread discussion, bunch of old flyover folk who do nothing but bake bread.
Any good subreddits for baking?
beat the dough like it owes you money
After almost a year of try and error, this is my result..
>>7284838
Those look delicious.
>>7284838
Wow those rolls look delicious, what kind of dough did you use? I'll keep trying and failing until I get gud
>>7284714
Yeah, I think I overproofed it. I'll make another in a few days with a shorter proof time and post it here
>>7284838
look great man
>>7282154
>I just want to perfect the most simple loaf so I have a base to modify off of. I keep trying different loaf recipes and they never come out perfectly, and I'm not sure if it's the recipe, or the moisture/temp of where I live, or if it's just my messing up.
How have you tweaked the recipe to make improvements?
After fucking around with a pizza dough recipe, I found the biggest improvement came after I stopped trying to simply bake it on the rack in the oven and instead baked that fucker on a stone right underneath the hot ass broiler.
Futz with your water to flour ratio, and try starting the bake on the highest setting your oven will do, then back it off to 400-350 or so to finish it. You're just going to have to keep experimenting until you get something close to what you want, anon, that's what everyone does.
>>7284838
Let's see the crumbshot
>>7283489
>Do I need to bake for longer?
yes. looks underdone.
>>7282101
Whole idea of pullman pan is limit the bread ability to rise by adding a roof, isn't it? I'd say look into different recipes.
>>7284740
BuMp
>>7286203
Lol
