Comments on: A toast to heavy bread

By: pat neely

pat neely — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:42:54 +0000

I have not bought a loaf of bread for about 6 years. I confess? to using a bread machine – but only to do the initial kneading (why do the donkey work if you don’t have to?) I then take it out and do the rest of it by hand and bake in an ordinary oven. I find this produces a better loaf than the bread maker can produce if it does the lot.

By: Dan Lepard

Dan Lepard — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:49:47 +0000

80 is a great age and we can all only hope to live happily that long. And to stay in love.
Dan
p.s. Sarah is my sister

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:01:55 +0000

Dear Dan

Breadmakers are the best when you are busy (we are on to our fifth) and they make a mean pasta dough with minimal fuss/mess. Highlight of my week was my mothers 80th birthday party (we had a great time!) but she still didn’t eat the bread roll.

Sarah

By: Peter Cook

Peter Cook — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:05:26 +0000

Hello Dan,
I made a heavy loaf yesterday, by adding some delicious Californian Prune Puree that I had been given.

Not sure if it was the starter or my spelt inexperience, but I lost patience and baked too early. Result=heavy (but tasty) loaf.

Peter

By: Anja

Anja — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:10:16 +0000

Dan,

this sounds great – that’s how most of my bread turns out (by design), they’re rarely ‘domed’ – the pebbledashed crust just add to it’s charm. One day hubby made a loaf of nearly 100% Rye (home ground) and it only rose a little but the taste was excellent and despite brickiness was definitely edible, and enjoyable. I use a 10+ year old panasonic that’s got a few programmes but really all I use is WM which has enough of a rise for heavy wholemeal breads with added grains (added from the start).

Sue: adding a bit of fat (a small tablespoon of margarine, or oil) will help with keeping it soft a bit longer. All our loaves (made from varying proportions of home-ground wheat and/or rye and occasional additions of white) last several days without drying too much.

By: Juliet

Juliet — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:54:29 +0000

This is really exciting news. A volume of interesting recipes would be very welcome as the manual / recipe book offerings work well for the basics.
I have three bread machine cook books but find that many of the ingredients are not available here in UK. I have a Panasonic bread machine and find 1 teaspoon of yeast to be the maximum needed and usually reduce the water by 10 – 15 ml. Occasional misshapen/ heavy loaves have been edible when sliced thinly. This machine churns out a very acceptable wholemeal or granary loaf to provide for sandwiches but I’m sure it could do more.

By: Barm

Barm — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:00:18 +0000

Sourdough wouldn’t be a problem if there were such a thing as a programmable machine, but nobody seems to make one. It seems cheap machines have three programmes and expensive ones have 200, yet none give you the option to write your own where you could include the 4 hour rise or whatever your favoured sourdough recipe requires.

By: Chris Young

Chris Young — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:28:17 +0000

Hi Dan,

At the beginning of May, we’ll be encouraging people to dig out their unloved bread machines to get baking Real Bread or pass it on to someone who will.

I look forward to reading how you get on – especially if you come up with a way to make genuine sourdough in a machine.

Cheers

Chris
The Real Bread Campaign

By: Bill Philpot

Bill Philpot — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:15:44 +0000

Hi Dan,

I used to find that my bread nearly always turned out heavy and dense until, through a bit of experimentation, I tried two things. I left the bread much longer in its final prove, which I see you do in today’s hotdog rolls recipe, and I then put it into a cold oven with a tray of steaming hot water beneath. It seems to rise to its maximum as the oven warms up to full heat.

Of course, you can only do this once, or leave the oven to go cold and start again.

Bill

By: Dan Lepard

Dan Lepard — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:59:19 +0000

Hi Sue,

The thought of you walking through the wheat field to collect grain to mill has stuck in my mind. That’s the life I want.

Yes, give wholemeal flour much less kneading and keep the first rise (before shaping) rather short, just enough to see little air bubbles in the dough or when it has risen by 15% – 25%. It’s all to do with the proportion of gluten in wholemeal flour compared to white flour. All the bran, fibre and wheatgerm in wholemeal flour means that the white flour – that contains all the gluten that allows the dough to stretch and bounce back – is a much small proportion of the total weight, compared to a batch of all white flour. So less gluten means “knead less”.

For the vit c, you could add the juice of an orange in place of some of the water. It does make a difference to the resilience of the dough and will help keep it light.

Dan