Reasonable Success!

Hello everyone!

So, I had a bread epiphany lately. I've been thinking about the whole concept of bread volume/ingredient amount/yeast activity. If you saw the last post, you saw that the recipe of "double everything" ended up poofing up way too much. It was an interesting experience, as it didn't just become bigger, but it poofed up so much that it filled up the entire bread machine.

This made me ask the question of "do you actually need to double the yeast if you double the ingredients?"

I have an answer on this!

I did a double "Standard Recipe", with the exception of the yeast and mistakenly more than double sugar. (50 grams)

For those just checking in this is the Standard Recipe.

Flour: 330 grams
Water: 220 grams
Sugar: 15 grams
Salt: 7.62 grams
Yeast: 4 grams
Butter: 25 grams.

So, the recipe I went with is:

Flour: 660 grams
Water: 440 grams
Sugar: 50 grams
Salt: 15 grams
Yeast: 4 grams
Butter: 50 grams.

I ended up getting a very good result with this!

The bread ended up rising to just past the top of the bin.

So, at the end of the day, this was a successful loaf. However, I feel that I am going to decrease the ingredient amount slightly (maybe do a 1.5x Standard Recipe), and increase the yeast to 6 grams. I'm hoping I can hit the magic zone where the bread is light and fluffy.

Double the ingredients, triple the bread?

Well..

I'm about to make a statement that is going to cause a lot of ruckus and chortling.

I don't understand yeast.

So, I did something rash. I decided that I was going to double all of the ingredients, except for the yeast. I did a double batch of the "Standard Recipe" with the exception of the yeast, which I kept at 8 grams.

I sure got a result.

I don't think it is out of line to say I got too much of a result.

With a 1/2hr left in the baking the bread had risen so high that it had lifted the top off of the bread maker. I actually popped the top of it so it wouldn't touch.

This all ended up forcing me to ask a difficult question: Exactly how does the amount of yeast affect the rise?

It is a tricky question to answer. I think that the rise is a function of the mass of the dough, the width of the pan, the amount of yeast, the "rising efficiency", and magic.

What I think the problem is is that rise isn't a linear function. I suspect that it is partially linear, then it hits a plateau with diminishing returns for a given dough mass. Where the problem comes in is finding the butter-zone of dough mass/rise. Too fluffy and you have a bread where it is impossible to cut or process (as well as being too crispy/weird), too heavy and you have a bread that isn't palatable.

The pickle with this loaf is that it has a nice interior cell size and decent fluff, however, it rose way, way, wayyyyyyyy too much.

I'm thinking I'm going to use the same mass of ingredients, but lower the yeast by 2 grams.

A new machine and interesting results!

Hello all!

So, I recently picked up a dual paddle horizontal pan machine and decided to give it a whirl using the "Standard Recipe".

Flour: 330 grams
Water: 220 grams
Sugar: 15 grams
Salt: 7.62 grams
Yeast: 8 grams
Butter : 25 grams.

Mythbusters say that failure is always an option.

I had the most peculiar experience with this.

First thing I noticed is that the dough took quite a while to become "not sticky". It wasn't until the first rise that the dough would be able to be handled by human hands. It's texture was akin to mush instead of nice dough.

After it came out, the outside crust was quite dry, although the insides were extremely light and fluffy; almost too fluffy. I practically mangled the bread when trying to cut a reasonable thickness slice. So, for dinner we had "Texas Sized" pieced of bread over an inch thick.

Sadly, I didn't take pictures of the final result.

Things I think I've learned from this:

1. For a given pan size, there is a minimum amount of dough you should use
2. The amount of yeast can provide too much lift if you have less constraints. (e.g. a long narrow pan that doesn't require as much height for a rise)
3. The crust moisture content will different depending on the rise/dough density.

Things to work on and work through. So, even though I've pretty much nailed my bread recipe for the other machine, this one requires a modification.

Things I'm going to try:

1. Decrease the amount of yeast
2. Increase the ingredient quantity
3. Increase the water content

What I think I'm going to do is to first decrease the yeast ratio, then increase (proportionately) the entire recipe. The rational behind this is that I'm getting a product that is too light and fluffy which is causing the crust to dry out before it has a chance to bake hard. As well, I think that there just isn't enough dough in the pan, further exacerbating the condition.

I'll keep the updates rolling!

The Standard Recipe and an oil change!

Hello there!

So, I've decided that my "Standard Recipe" (SR) is going to be the following:

Flour: 330 grams
Water: 220 grams
Sugar: 15 grams
Salt: 7.62 grams
Yeast: 8 grams
Butter: 25 grams.


Now, keeping this in mind I did my first intentional variation off of the standard. I did a loaf replacing the butter with 25 grams of Peanut Oil.

The internal texture and rise heigh of the product was practically identical to the SR. However, the crust was "crunchy" relative to butter based baseline. The flavor wasn't really affected, but you could tell that something was different, even if you couldn't put your finger on what it was.

I would make this variant again.

Variant:

Flour: 330 grams

Water: 220 grams
Sugar: 15 grams
Salt: 7.62 grams
Yeast: 8 grams
Peanut Oil: 25 grams.

My little microbes were all dead!!

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

-Albert Einstein

This is the part where everyone pats themselves on the back and goes home, except I did get different results!

I had to ask myself the question of why my bread was getting so bad when I was doing the same thing and not getting reasonable results.

The loafs were getting smaller and smaller over the span of two weeks. I thought to myself that maybe I was going nuts. Or I had the water temperature wrong. Or... Something?!?!?

I ended up testing the yeast and it was dead as a doornail. I ran out and bought new yeast and...

I got a loaf about the same size as my under performing loaf from before. It was 4cm from the top. But that was a far cry from the "basically flat" loaf that I had made the night before.

So, just for Shiggles (shits/giggles) I decided to make a loaf with 8 grams of yeast, but keep everything else the same. And I got a result, and whattaresult!

Recipe:

Water: 220.0 grams @ 27'C
Bread Flour: 330.0 grams
Butter: 25.00
Sugar: 15.0 grams
Salt: 7.61 grams
Yeast: 8 grams <- Up from 3.65

WOAH NELLY!

THAT'S A RESULT

That is a seriously puffy lady!

So what happened?

Well, from what I can gather, I had two problems:

1. I wasn't using enough yeast.
2. My yeast died extremely quickly.

My recipe was exactly the same as the previous one, with the exception of the amount of yeast, which was 8 grams.

So, why did my first couple loafs do so well for height? (2cm from top)

I got a good result with fairly hot water, and I'm thinking I may try that again, once I've replicated my monster loaf. I'm going to do the 37.5' water and see if that makes this work better (with the original 3.65 grams of yeast)

I'll keep you posted!

The hydrogenated difference?

This next loaf is going to be very similar to the first couple loafs that I made. The only difference is going to be that I am only using 220 mg of water (at 37.5 deg C) and, surprisingly, margarine. I didn't choose to use margarine this time for any other reason other then all of my butter is frozen.

One thing that is new aside from the butter is that I tried to use as few dishes as possible when I made this. I only used a small piece of saran wrap a single spoon and a small plastic container.

The idea is that I am trying to cut down on the amount of dirty dishes that I generate.

Now right after I put this in the mixer I started to read up on the effect of water temperature on dough. I think I've been doing this all wrong!

I have been using fairly hot water. And it is entirely possible that the water is just too flaming hot for its own good!

Now, according to The Accidental Scientist the recommended water temperature for bread machines is 21-27'C. I'm nearly 10 degrees hotter than the upper limit! YIKES!

So, this recipe is nearly identical to the last one, with the exception that I actually put the fat in it.

Water: 220.0 grams @ 37.5 <- Up from 210 grams
Bread Flour: 330.0 grams
MARGARINE: 26.00 <- WOAH is me! I had to use the fake stuff!
Sugar: 15.0 grams
Salt: 7.61 grams
Yeast: 3.650 grams

Pictures are forthcoming.

A Culinary Turd

Well,

I'm afraid I really screwed the pooch on this one. Now, I'm not going to name any names on this. But someone may have forgot to add to butter to this. And what a difference it made. And someone may have touched the amazingly sticky dough and screwed up the rising... Not mentioning any names though.

Here is the recipe I used:

Water: 220.0 grams @ 37.5 <- Up from 210 grams 

Bread Flour: 330.0 grams

Butter: NONE <- Someone may have dropped the ball..

Sugar: 15.0 grams

Salt: 7.61 grams

Yeast: 3.650 grams

Now, the loaf was a reasonable consistency and would have been quite tasty had it not been molested by some dumb-ass trying to remove the paddle. It may have even risen properly!

I didn't take any pictures of this train wreck, so you'll just have to take my word on it.

Le sigh. You live and learn.

Big failure

Alright!

So, today I'm basically copying the previous recipe with only some small changes to it. I've decided to go with 210mg(ml) of water. Now, I could tell that the bread maker was starting to get angry at this change. I've noticed in the past that my machine would start to labor if I didn't have enough water in it.

I'm guessing that it was all about how soft it made the dough? Maybe?

Alright here is the recipe I used:

Water: 210.0 grams (I basically used hot water from the tap)  <- Down from 230 grams

Bread Flour: 330.0 grams

Butter: 25.75 grams <- Down from 26.35

Sugar: 15.0 grams

Salt: 7.61 grams

Yeast: 3.650 grams

In reality the yeast was slightly off and so was the salt. But, the loaf doesn't appear to be sensitive to minor changes of those two items, so I wasn't too worried about recording the 10-20mg difference.

I'll post pics and heights when it is out of the maker!

Staggering Result!!

Well, it is a little hard to see from the picture, but the loaf came out 2 cm lower than the previous loaf. It was a staggering 4.5cm from the top of the pan.

It was a denser, and slightly chewier loaf. The outside of it was fairly crisp and it had a pleasant flavor. The 24 and half dollar question is whether the density was affected by the lower water quantity or if it was caused by me using too hot of water.

I'm going to make a loaf that has the same water, just a known temperature. Maybe that'll fix the height issue?

Bread and pie!

Hello again!

Tonight I got Emily to try and replicate the results of the last loaf. We've made some small changes to it and recorded a bit more data!

Today's recipe:

Water: 230.0 grams at 37.5'C  <- Down from 250 grams

Bread Flour: 330.0 grams

Butter: 26.35 grams <-Up from 26

Sugar: 15.0 grams

Salt: 7.61 grams

Yeast: 3.650 grams

The main change was the amount of water. It wasn't as wet and soggy as it was last time. I would say I'm on the right track at the moment. I'm thinking for the next loaf I'm going to reduce the water ever so slightly more to maybe around 215.

One thing I've noticed is the cell size is quite small.

 

So, what is this picture below?

Well, I decided I was also going to make some cherry tarts/mini pies.

Now, I realize that this isn't Etsy/Pintrest quality pie. First thing to note is that I accidentally over baked them by about 20 minutes. The pie crust was actually quite nice. It had many layers and was nice and flaky.

This was a prime example on how why you should measure your ingredients by mass. The original recipe called for 1/4 Cup "Ice Cold Water". Now, due to the fact that many old measuring cups just called a "cup" 250ml I've used that as my base line. In reality 1 Cup = 236.49 grams (or mL in our imperfect world).

Something that was fairly apparent to me was that if I had actually used 1/4 cups of water, I would have had used ~59 grams of water. But, it ended up being a lot more than that after all was done.

Here is the recipe I used:

Pie crust  recipe:

Water: 86.3 grams at 4.0'C  

Bread Flour: 206.0 grams <-- Bread flour for a pie crust?!?! Save us from the madness!

Butter: 115 grams

Sugar: 15.0 grams

Salt: 1.8 grams. 

All in all this would have been a nice and flaky and very buttery crust had I not boned the baking of them!

As well, the filling was bought at "Bulk Barn", and was quite tasty. Although, I would have preferred to have a higher cherry density. 

Loaf number 2, with cheese!

I just started another loaf. I used the same recipe and quantities, and am now starting the process. There is one exception in quantities though, I have increased the butter.

Here we go!

Today's recipe:

• Water: 250.0 grams
• Bread Flour: 330.0 grams
• Butter: 26.00 grams <-Up from 22.5
• Sugar: 15.0 grams
• Salt: 7.60 grams
• Yeast: 3.650 grams <-Up from 3.57

The yeast was as close as I could make it. Turns out 0.08 grams of yeast is not very much and I just gave up trying to nail it.
However, 3.5 grams of butter is actually a fairly significant amount. I'm curious to see what this will do to it. The one thing I'm going to do differently this time is get the loaf out of the pan faster. It was certainly a mistake keeping it in the pan after it was done. It caused the moisture in it to condense and create a "wet" loaf.
I'll keep you posted!

My first loaf!

For today's loaf, I wanted to start off with nice round numbers.

Here is my data for today's loaf:

1. Water: 250.0 grams
2. Bread Flour: 330.0 grams
3. Butter: 22.50 grams
4. Sugar: 15.0 grams
5. Salt: 7.60 grams
6. Yeast: 3.570 grams

I'm going to record the darkness, heaviness, and height of the loaf. As well I've got other less interesting metrics that I'm recording such as the machine loaf setting and machine darkness.
I am also thinking that I should measure things like loaf density by making a jig to cut a "perfect slice". But, I believe that I can calculate out relative fluffiness by generating a number based upon the total weight of ingredients, and the height of the loaf.

Comments? Suggestions?

Let's get this party started!

Hello everyone!

I've decided to start this blog in order to help document my endeavor of trying to be able to make a loaf of bread.

"Well, IIIIIIII've got a bread machine and I can make a perfectly good loaf" says you.

Really? Can you customize the loaf? Do you know what adding or subtracting water will do? How about if I took away your measure spoons and cups and gave you a different set? Would you get the same loaf? Could you repeat your loaf?

And that is why I've created this. I learned that measuring cups are wildly inaccurate. A "cup" of water is anywhere from 210ml-270ml depending on which measuring cup I used at my house. A "cup" of flour measured anywhere from 140-180mg! That is a pretty large margin of error.

So, what I've endeavored to do is to:

1. Use weights instead of volume
2. Document the daylights out of what I make.
3. Record the results
4. Repeat to verify.

What I'm using :

A scale capable of measuring in grams

A scale capable of measuring in 10 milligram or better.

Various containers to measuring and holding the ingredients.

A "Philips" bread maker.

A thermometer. (Mines missing)

Excel - To document

What to expect :

Umm bread?

How you can help :

I want you to give this a try and tell me how it went. Post pictures. More importantly, post data. I want to know everything about what you did, and how it turned out.

Let's get this party started!