Bread -

[Old Hippie]

What to make for supper the other night? Well...what's about to go bad?

Having a container of durum dough for pitas, pizzas and other ethnic breads beginning with "P" I decided to branch out.

Squash, kale, leek and a bit of salt and sage; wrapped in some dough and baked. Calzone? Borek? Samosa? How many cultures have "some kinda stuff baked inside a dough"?

It was good.

We tried that "Bread for a Week" idea. What we ended up with was a Pullman loaf pan big enough to take the whole wad and turn it into one really long loaf. THAT'S bread for a week. Rejigged the original idea to the durum dough and it works just fine.

Our weekly loaf is sourdough, but the durum dough is yeasted.

O.H.

 

[njpaddy]

I was raised in the 50s & 60s, with butter on everything. These days I still fry or scramble my eggs every morning in REAL butter, but I don't have the patience for buttering toast. I usually toast whole wheat bread, but I use Smart Balance Omega as a spread.

 

[Old Hippie]

I was raised in the 50s & 60s, with butter on everything. These days I still fry or scramble my eggs every morning in REAL butter, but I don't have the patience for buttering toast. I usually toast whole wheat bread, but I use Smart Balance Omega as a spread.

Back in the day my father was a milkman. Part of his daily route was to deliver to the fraternities and sororities along "Frat Row" near Oregon State University in Corvallis. Wasn't too long before he was well-known to all the cooks at each house; he was a real customer-forward guy in the days before the business-jargon idiots took over. At any rate, he used to talk about one cook in particular who was famous for her cinnamon rolls. When she made them, they were fresh hot out of the oven when he arrived. She would take one, go over to the stove where she had a 5-pound lard bucket on the back burner, reach in and pull out a large paintbrush dripping with melted butter which she would then slather on the bun before handing the bun to him.

Maybe that'd be a good idea for your toast.

We churn our own cultured butter about once a week. I also get a quart of buttermilk out of it; good probiotics.

O.H.

 

[Ponycarman]

Baked my first loaf ever tonight. Cheddar cheese bread in my dutch oven . Very tasty!

 

[Ponycarman]

Second loaf! Just plain but topped with some bagel and more seasoning.

 

[kelbro]

Planning a little Phở tonight so I needed some sourdough Bánh mì.

 

[Ted A]

Baked my first loaf ever tonight. Cheddar cheese bread in my dutch oven . Very tasty!

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Oh! That looks good!

 

[oc_in_fw]

I was raised in the 50s & 60s, with butter on everything. These days I still fry or scramble my eggs every morning in REAL butter, but I don't have the patience for buttering toast. I usually toast whole wheat bread, but I use Smart Balance Omega as a spread.

I think we may be the only country that puts butter in the fridge. Butter bells are great.

https://www.amazon.com/Butter-Bell-Original-Collection-Maraschino/dp/B01N27VMYC/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1LJC1ISO45X8K&keywords=butter%2Bbell&qid=1644111250&sprefix=butter%2Bbel%2Caps%2C205&sr=8-1-spons&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExRE9WTE9BWkszUEc3JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwODk1NTk0MlJENVVUSFRWUU1ORCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNDA3MTgyMk9XT0NINFJPNzM2TCZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU&th=1

 

[TexLaw]

I'm catching up on old threads, obviously, but this one made me think of something that happened a little while ago.

I had a milestone birthday a couple of months ago, and Mrs. TL and I celebrated by taking a very nice trip for a couple of weeks. We were due to get back home on December 17, and our older son was going to arrive at our house the day before (coming back home from college for holidays). He gives us a call the day before and says "I got home, and the refrigerator had caught fire." As you might imagine, we nearly freaked out. Fortunately, the fire was contained inside the fridge (it was the icemaker motor). The fridge/freezer was ruined, as was everything in it, but that was the total extent of the damage to everything but my wallet.

Fast forward a little bit. I wake up one morning with the urge to make some pita. I start pulling everything together when it hits me that my beautiful bunch of yeast that resided in the freezer was among the casualties. I go to the pantry to see if we have any packets, but the cupboard is bare in that respect. I really didn't want to go to the store. It was a cold, cruddy day in the middle of the Omicron surge, right after the holidays, and I just wanted to hole up (albeit with some fresh pita).

But, wait a minute! I do have yeast! It might be the Red Star Premiere Classique wine yeast (formerly known as "Montrachet") that I use for apfelwein, but it's yeast. I swear I even saw a mention somewhere of someone using it for baking. This can only be a small mistake, yes?

Well, let me tell you something. I don't know if I would use it for the most sensitive loaves, but Red Star Premiere Classique wine yeast makes a mighty fine batch of pita.

 

[kelbro]

Threw a plain white sourdough loaf in the oven to accompany tonight's dinner. Waiting a couple of hours to slice it is always a challenge!

 

[kelbro]

Sourdough rye bread in the Dutch oven today. Reubens tomorrow!

 

[Dominic]

Sourdough rye bread in the Dutch oven today. Reubens tomorrow!

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Love a good Reuben. So much better homemade with homemade bread than from a restaurant.

 

[Phoenixkh]

I like bread. I like toast with REAL butter. I’ll say that again....REAL butter. It’s the only butter I eat. But anyway...bread...

Nothing beats warm homemade bread with REAL BUTTER.. ok, this isn’t about butter. It’s about bread.

Bread for sandwiches, bread for toast and eggs in the morning, bread for PB&J. BTW, I like my PB&J with REAL BUTTER on it.

I found a really good bread the other day at the supermarket -

Dave’s Killer Bread

Dave's Killer Bread

Dave's Killer Bread is an American brand of organic whole-grain products. Packed with seeds and grains, made with only the very best organic and non-GMO ingredients.

www.daveskillerbread.com

I got the Thin Sliced Good Seed. It was rather expensive at about $5 per loaf. But dang if it isn’t good! Just so much more flavor than the plain ole White Bread of my youth. Ya know the kind, the Wonder Breads, Healthy Life, Bimbo, Sara Lee, or any of the familiar generic store brands. Bleh! BLEH! BLLEEEEHHHH!!!!! I just can’t stomach that stuff anymore.

This will be the bread I buy going forward. Or any other non-top 5 Billboard chart breads. There’s just something about GOOD BREAD that does it for me.


And REAL BUTTER!!

So what ya got? Ya’ll eat any good bread lately?

Actually, it IS about the butter. <eg>

I'm off the bread, unfortunately.. there are few things better than warm bread, right out of the oven with some nice hard butter on it... I like to put softened butter on toast but just love some hard butter on warm bread... the kind with the crunchy crust.. French or Italian bread... mmm good.

 

[Phoenixkh]

OK... I can't read the rest of this thread............ I think I gained a pound from reading just a couple pots... Lovely stuff: bread. As in the post I quoted... with real butter.... mandatory... I can believe it isn't real butter immediately.

 

[johnb65]

My latest bread-making gadget.
The house is now filled with various sacks of wheat and rye grains!!
I need a bigger larder.

 

[johnb65]

Made with freshly ground flour, sourdough mixed seed bread.

 

[TexLaw]

I'm just back from a two and a half week trip to France and Northern Europe. Man, you want to talk about bread! From the croissants and baguettes (and other wonders) in Bordeaux and Brittany to the hardy rye breads of Iceland, I was out of my mind in love (or was that "in loaves"?) Good heavens, the hotel breakfast buffet in Reykjavik had no fewer than four different kinds of bread on hand, in loaves, for you to slice as much as you would like (with plenty of butter on hand, of course).

I know I gained plenty of weight from all the wonderful food and drink we enjoyed over the trip, but the bread is what really did me in.

 

[ridinshotgun]

Sourdough rye bread in the Dutch oven today. Reubens tomorrow!

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So is your culture based on rye flour? I haven’t done any rye yet due to the issues I read about getting a good rise with a normal AP flour culture and rye flour. But I would love to be able to do a good rye. I was looking at a specific rye based culture offered by sourdoughs international but it is expensive.

 

[kelbro]

So is your culture based on rye flour? I haven’t done any rye yet due to the issues I read about getting a good rise with a normal AP flour culture and rye flour. But I would love to be able to do a good rye. I was looking at a specific rye based culture offered by sourdoughs international but it is expensive.

My sourdough culture is 40% AP flour, 40% whole wheat flour, 20% dark rye. I made rye bread for a long time with great results using only the AP/WW culture. Adding the rye to the sourdough helped the flavor and the rise and the dough smells SO good! I use that 40/40/20 mix now for almost all of my bread. The amount of rye that I use in my dough is slightly different if I'm making Czech rye bread or Jewish deli rye bread.

 

[2bit_collie]

I always use rye for my sourdough starter. I use 20% starter, so 80g of rye in a 400g flour loaf. At that level it really doesn’t impact the rise at all. I’ve heard that having a bit of rye in the mix helps keep the bread from going stale, but in my experiments I think it has to be 30% to have a meaningful impact.

To compensate for the lack of rise from rye or other whole grain flour, I usually use whole grain bread flour for at least 50% of the loaf. If you do that and get the timing right 20% rye and 80% whole wheat bread flour will rise pretty decently. Of course you can juice it a bit with 20-30% normal bread Flour.

Recently I bought a bag of Kamut - that is a tetraploid wheat, actually its a brand name for Khorasan wheat (originally from Iran) that is raised in Montan. Compared to the more common hexaploid Hard Red Sprint Wheat
* its more yellow in color
* has a great nutty flavor
* has more protein (20%) but less gluten - so it will NOT rise as well as Hard Red Spring. It might do as well as AP, but I haven’t got any whole grain AP to test it against.

I think I’ve concluded that if I want a top notch loaf from the Kamut I need to include about 20% white bread flour. Though I do have some gluten somewhere, I might just try adding 20-30g of gluten to see what that does.

I always think posts are better with photos. Below is a photo of my most recent loaf 20% rye, 80% King Arthur Whole grain White Wheat. I was trying to show to someone how much darker the finished loaf is compared to the flour you start with (that is the White Wheat, which definitely is paler in color than Hard Red Wheat. Yeah, its pretty dense, I put it to bulk ferment and then left for a B&B meet-up. By the time I got back it had overfermented! Tastes great though!