vegster
Sanity Clause
- May 5, 2008
- 28,272
I had a bread machine and it was quite good. I never got to like the bit of the loaf where the paddle went which ruined the nice bread. I switched to using the machine to knead but baking in silicon moulds, I bought a couple of Silicon small sub- roll moulds from Chain-A which have proved brilliant and indestructible. My breadmaker eventually died so I bought a Kenwood chef for doing the dough which is ok ish but not brilliant as the dough always goes up the dough hook and hangs there as it goes round.
Tried sourdough for quite a while but never had a successful loaf, most of it went in the bin uncooked, the alternative was to bung it in the oven and bake a flatbread or a dense flat boulder. I would not touch on trying it at the moment as its a huge investment in time, and, valuable flour unless you know exactly what you are doing.
Someone bought Paul Hollywood's " Bread " for me as a crimbo pressie a few years back, the first loaf recipe, a Bloomer ( allegedly the simplest ) always turned out shit. It said to do a second prove and just before putting in the oven score it diagonally 4-5 times with a sharp knife before putting in the oven..... I did this with an ever sharper range of knives and all that ever happened was that all the air collapsed out of it and all I got was another flat inedible loaf.... I was going to give the book away to a charity shop but thought better, I would not want some other poor sod suffering like I did.
So, I have a basic ratio recipe of 500g strong white bread flour/malted grain bread flour with 280ml luke warm water+ sunflower oil and that works pretty well for me.
Tried sourdough for quite a while but never had a successful loaf, most of it went in the bin uncooked, the alternative was to bung it in the oven and bake a flatbread or a dense flat boulder. I would not touch on trying it at the moment as its a huge investment in time, and, valuable flour unless you know exactly what you are doing.
Someone bought Paul Hollywood's " Bread " for me as a crimbo pressie a few years back, the first loaf recipe, a Bloomer ( allegedly the simplest ) always turned out shit. It said to do a second prove and just before putting in the oven score it diagonally 4-5 times with a sharp knife before putting in the oven..... I did this with an ever sharper range of knives and all that ever happened was that all the air collapsed out of it and all I got was another flat inedible loaf.... I was going to give the book away to a charity shop but thought better, I would not want some other poor sod suffering like I did.
So, I have a basic ratio recipe of 500g strong white bread flour/malted grain bread flour with 280ml luke warm water+ sunflower oil and that works pretty well for me.
