Bread Making on board

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Macblaze

Sacrilege!

The only "real" way to make bagels is to roll them into a tube, wrap them around your fingers and try to join the two ends by rolling them together

I say try because I usually only have a 70% success rate at making them actually stick together through the boil process. But I'm stubborn and that number is slowly climbing.

So noted. I am a heathen.

I will admit, my bagels were NOT the prettiest in the world. Pretty danged uneven, an to be honest, even ugly. But they sure were good. Even one of my kids really like them and asked when I was going to make more.

The other thing that did not go well was the bagel "shape." I think I let them rise over night after creating the shape. That did not work out because they bagel shape turned into a platter of dough. I had to remake the bagel shape and quickly boil them in the morning. Lesson learned.

Interesting, I did not have a problem with the bagels sticking together, so maybe the technique I used was not so bad after all. I was wondering if rolling the bagels out would be "better" and the one link I posted was using that technique. I think the bagel shops have a machine that makes the bagel from a round dough. I am the machine.

Later,
Dan

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Captn_Black

... Or a big stainless/plastic mixing bowl. I prefer the mixing bowl option,...

Yep, I mix the dough in a bowl and kneed the dough in the bowl. Really no mess to clean up.

We have a cheap, cheap plastic bowl. I don't know where we got it but I wish we had a couple of them. The bowl is very non stick but it is simply a cheap, plastic bowl. Dough and pancake batter just does not stick. It is much better than the stainless steel mixing bowls we have.

The other thing that keeps the mess down, and speeds up bread making, is a digital scale. Turn the scale on, but the bowl on the scale, zero the scale, and if the recipe has the amounts by weight, just pour the ingredients into the bowl, zero scale, and repeat until the ingredients are measured out. The only measuring cup I need has been for water since it needs to be warm. Since only water went into the cup is just gets put up to dry out. I do have to use measuring spoons but since those are dry ingredients that is easey peasey to clean up. Takes longer to put the scale away than to clean the measuring spoons and cup.

Later,
Dan

[Captn_Black]

Originally Posted by dannc

Yep, I mix the dough in a bowl and kneed the dough in the bowl. Really no mess to clean up.

We have a cheap, cheap plastic bowl. I don't know where we got it but I wish we had a couple of them. The bowl is very non stick but it is simply a cheap, plastic bowl. Dough and pancake batter just does not stick. It is much better than the stainless steel mixing bowls we have.

The other thing that keeps the mess down, and speeds up bread making, is a digital scale. Turn the scale on, but the bowl on the scale, zero the scale, and if the recipe has the amounts by weight, just pour the ingredients into the bowl, zero scale, and repeat until the ingredients are measured out. The only measuring cup I need has been for water since it needs to be warm. Since only water went into the cup is just gets put up to dry out. I do have to use measuring spoons but since those are dry ingredients that is easey peasey to clean up. Takes longer to put the scale away than to clean the measuring spoons and cup.

Later,
Dan

A used to be a chef, so I guess it is easier for me to do it all by eye. I just pour until it looks right. I never measure.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Captn_Black

Ah, this may explain why I got really sick by trying to keep some yeast alive for a long time by keeping it with water and sugar in a plastic bottle. I just buy sachets of yeast now, as the larger packets tend to go off quickly aboard.

If you have a fridge, put the yeast in there to preserve it. I have used dried yeast that was years out of date that I had kept in the fridge. You can freeze the dried yeast, if you have a freezer.

If you want to keep yeast, make a sour dough. It is not rocket science. I made some in March or April when dried yeast disappeared from the stores. Made a loaf of whole wheat, sour dough, with a bunch of seeds/nuts Sunday night, let it rise since them, and baked this morning. It was sooo good. Good crust and the smell when it was baking....

To make my sour dough, I took a half of cup or so of whole wheat flour, put it in a wide mouth, one quart mason jar, and mixed a bit of water so that it was the consistency of a pancake batter. Not too thick but not too thin. Every day add, say a quarter of cup of flour, and a bit of water to get the consistency. If you miss a day. Don't worry, just keep going. You are supposed to do this for 10-14 days before using the sour dough. Some people say to throw away part of the sour dough as you go along. I just could not throw the stuff away, especially with no flour on the store shelves, so I put the extra sour dough in another one quart jar, and started to feed it. I have two quart jars going.

The yeast is in the flour.

When I bake bread I use a bit of sour dough from both jars and then feed both jars. I don't feed every day but I do try to feed them a couple of days before making the dough and a couple of days after making the dough. If I miss a day or so during the week it is no big deal. You can put the sour dough in the fridge to put it to sleep and take it out a few days before baking to wake it up.

Every couple of weeks or so, I move the sour dough to clean mason jars. It takes longer for me to move the sour dough to clean jars than it does to make a dough.

Later,
Dan

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Captn_Black

A used to be a chef, so I guess it is easier for me to do it all by eye. I just pour until it looks right. I never measure.

And that works too. Most of the time, I am adding a half a dozen or so seeds/nuts to the bread so I want to measure, either with spoons are by weight, just so I get the right amount. If I am just making bread, its not so critical, as long as I don't make too much to fit in the bread pan.

When I first started making bread, I was not real exact if the measurements, just kinda followed along and if I had too much flour, I would add more water.

The recipe I use calls for a certain amount of sour dough. I use the scale but always add more since I think the dough needs more sour dough.

Later,
Dan

[sparrowhawk1]

Thanks for the info Dan. Personally there are times that I'm too busy or I just forgot to soak the grains, flour overnight and it would be great to have bread instantly on hand at all times. After what you showed me I definitely won't be doing it using an oven. I'm going to look into using a pressure cooker.

Originally Posted by dannc

I have seen canned bread but I can barely see that I would want to do so myself, and certainly not in a jar. In any case, canning, i.e., preserving bread in a jar, can kill you.

https://www.clemson.edu/extension/fo...es-breads.html

I usually take my bread out of the oven when it has an internal temperature of 200-205F. I try for a bit higher but never seem to make it, since I want to eat the bread soon. [emoji3]

Even 220F is not 240F.

Later,
Dan

[dannc]

Originally Posted by sparrowhawk1

Thanks for the info Dan. Personally there are times that I'm too busy or I just forgot to soak the grains, flour overnight and it would be great to have bread instantly on hand at all times. After what you showed me I definitely won't be doing it using an oven. I'm going to look into using a pressure cooker.

Yeah, the one downside to making your own bread, is having to think about it, making the dough and then baking. Not quite a spur of the moment thing. Though I have wondered about making some of the flat breads. I THOUGHT they did not take much time. But that would not be as fast as something canned.

In the video, I was curious how the heck they are going to get the bread out of the jars? Seems like it is gong to be a mess?

I did a quick search on using a pressure cooker to preserve bread and found this, https://explorepartsunknown.com/seattle/recipe-pressure-canned-brioche/.

They are pressure preserving and seem to be doing it correctly. It is an interesting idea. I wonder if dessert bread or puddings would work....

Later,
Dan

[Captn_Black]

To be honest, my gf is the one that makes the bread, I only make deep-pan pizza dough usually. It's pretty painless, get the yeast started, mix up the flour and a little salt (no need to measure, just keep adding flour till you get the right texture) and kneed in the bowl until it is firm but not too sticky (adding more flour only if needed, better too little than too much), let it rise, smoosh it into a pan that has been greased or oiled, let it rise again, half bake it in the oven, then add toppings and bake till finished.

[CarinaPDX]

Yes, bread-making is dead easy. The part that may take some time to learn is the "adding flour till you get the right texture" - using measurements alone won't get you there. The moisture content of flour stored at home, and more so on a boat, usually increases with time and thus needs less water to arrive at the right consistency. Once that consistency is learned it is a simple matter of adding flour until it is reached. While it is possible to add some water if it goes too far, that is a PITA as the dough will not readily absorb water.

In the US we use volumetric measurements which are prone to variation with the air that is in the mix, another difficulty in measurements-only baking. Elsewhere weight is used, which is a far better way to bake. And of course if we really wanted to catch up to the rest of the world we would also go metric...

Greg

[dannc]

Originally Posted by dannc

....
They are pressure preserving and seem to be doing it correctly. It is an interesting idea. I wonder if dessert bread or puddings would work....

Later,
Dan

I pondered this a bit, thought of the British puddings that are steamed, which made me think of Spotted Dick. That does not quite sound right....

This link talks about Spotted Dick, it's possible origins and shows how to make the pudding. It was slow to load for me but we don't have a fast network, however, the page is quite image dense. So, one could just search for a simpler page if one has bandwidth issues.

https://www.daringgourmet.com/tradit...nilla-custard/

Spotted Dick is a pudding, but not a pudding in the US sense of the word. It looks to me like a steamed cake. Since it is steamed, one would think it could be adapted to a pressure cooker for cooking and preserving. As the link mentions, you can buy Spotted Dick in a can.

Later,
Dan

[Captn_Black]

Yup, of course "the right texture" is something you've got to learn for yourself. But working up to it slowly while kneading the dough is the only way to do it - the same proportions that haven't been kneaded properly will seem really sticky, but will be more rubbery if you've worked up to it. If anything, measuring and tipping everything in at once is harder.

[s/v Jedi]

We have been testing parbaking for rolls which me make 16 in one batch. The results are far better than storing dough. We compared both fridge and freezer stored and while parbaked easily wins for fridge stored, the difference with freezer stored is huge. From the baked rolls you can’t tell that they were parbaked and stored in fridge or freezer. There is no difference in taste, texture etc. between stored in fridge or freezer.

We simply parbake at half the normal time and do the other half just before serving

[Captn_Black]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

We have been testing parbaking for rolls which me make 16 in one batch. The results are far better than storing dough. We compared both fridge and freezer stored and while parbaked easily wins for fridge stored, the difference with freezer stored is huge. From the baked rolls you can’t tell that they were parbaked and stored in fridge or freezer. There is no difference in taste, texture etc. between stored in fridge or freezer.

We simply parbake at half the normal time and do the other half just before serving

Yea, that's a good idea. In a lot of places you can buy them like that - they keep for a couple of weeks, and are pretty much as good as fresh once you bake them. Never really considered making them myself like that, but it's a good idea for passages.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

...
We simply parbake at half the normal time and do the other half just before serving

Interesting. Do you defrost the bread before the finish baking or just toss the bread in the oven?

Later,
Dan

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by dannc

Interesting. Do you defrost the bread before the finish baking or just toss the bread in the oven?

Later,
Dan

We defrost but the way you describe the other option I’m gonna try that too