Bread

[Sheryl]

Athenaeus,

Thankyou for your help. I love to bake. I have more time now to do so this time of my life and will be happy baking. I will let you know of my success and failures. I am sure to have some fun.
Sheryl

[Sheryl]

SVadhisthana,

Thankyou for the nice welcome. I am enjoying learning more about home bread baking. Sheryl

[KyleW]

The white loaf in baking with Julia is great and nearly foolproof! If you are going to use salted butter, I would cut back on the added salt. When I first started baking I was a salted butter buyer. Now I buy nothing but unsalted. I like being in charge of the salt content of my food, not Land O' Lakes

[KyleW]

Sheryl - I would be careful with the white loaves @450º. The dough has both butter and sugar in it and they don't usually like very high heat.

[daavery]

I tend to bake at 450-470 too (like kokopuffs) dropping to 350-375 after 8-10 min, BUT, I live at 8200 ft and the standard recomendations for high altitude baking are raise the temps 25-50 deg.

I suspect these temps would cause the loaf to not rise as much when baking at lower elevations

[Sheryl]

Daavery,

Thanks for your tip. I was concerned about the high temperature affecting the rising of my loaves. I will have to experiment.
Sheryl

[Sheryl]

Kyle,

Good point about the hot temperature of the oven being to hot for the white bread recipe. I don't want to burn my loaves of bread. I will let you know how successful it turns out.
Sheryl

[Athenaeus]

Dear Sheryl

I was reading this thread again and I was thinking...

As I told you I bake regularly but this is not strange for my country because it has a great tradition in making bread at home.
Lately by participating in some culinary forums, some of them dedicated exclusively for baking bread and after bought some more AMERICAN books ( Kimmie's, Isa's, Kyle's The Big Hat's Kokoppuff's posts have influenced me a lot on that) I have realised that when it comes to bread , we stick a lot on technical matters.Temperatures, moist etc etc
I know what my american friends will say. That baking bread is about technique.
I agree.

But since you start your baking career I will post here a very strange recipe that must have been invented by a woman that didn't know even how to read many years ago.

It's a very difficult bread , you might find the recipe absurd but I have made it twice, to memorate my late grandmother because this recipe is related to a strong family story, I will tell you if you wish.

I post you this recipe so as to show you my point of view that above technique , bread is inspiration. And if I was allowed to give just one tip I would give the follow : Knead the dough with your hands.
That way, bread becomes a very personal thing.

I post you this recipe to show that there is world of bread is rich and with many optons. I have many other recipes like this one that they were invented by very common people in the villages of my country.

I hope you will enjoy


Here is my Flower Bread or Bread of the Flower.
This Bread has a very nice and discreet taste of a flower .
The recipe is for the starter which is the most important. Once you have made the starter the rest is a piece of cake

Bread of the Flower

The mysterious flower that gives this distinctive taste to the bread is nothing else but the flower of the hop. Its scientific name is Humulus lupulus. You can find this herb in river sides, it has a nice white color and many leaves. You dry it and you can keep it for quite a long time!

For the starter.

Boil a teacup of hop with a glass of water for 2 -3 minutes, add 1 teaspoon of sugar.
Remove it from the heat and let it stay that way for 3-4 hours. Afterthat period of time, you strain it and you add flour in order to make a verysoft dough like a pudding.
Cover it with a woolen cloth and leave it in warm
place. By the fireplace is a good idea!
You leave it there for 3-4 days. Your starter is ready to use it as usual (adding 1 kilo of flour and the water that
is needed)

When you prepare the dough you will cover it again with your woolen cloth and
you will let it stay for 15 hours!

Sprinkle some flour on a clean tablecloth. Divide the dough into pieces as if you want to make pancakes! You leave them on the tablecloth to dry. Just before they dry completely you powder those "pancakes" with your hands. You must make them look like coarse salt!

This is your flower yeast that you are going to use every time you will want to make this bread! All you have to do is use a teacup of this "flower yeast", soaked in some hot water and you prepare your bread as normal. During the whole process you need a steady temperature!

[Sheryl]

Athenaeus,

I found your story about the bread of the flower very interesting. I don't think the flower is available to me. Isn' t it the same hops that they use to ferment beer?

Many years ago I used to knead my own bread but had to give it up as I have a condition called Fibromyalga and kneading is very painful for me. I used the bread machine but was never that satisfied with the bread it produced. I just recently purchased a Kitchen-Aid mixer and now can knead my bread with the hook. Now I am very interested in making bread again and baking it in my own oven.

I bet your breads in Greece are wonderful. Did you say you use a brick oven? That sounds wonderful. I will have to check out on how they are made and find out more about this type of baking. It would be nice to have an outside one to bake in the summertime. Thanks for sharing your story. Sheryl

[Athenaeus]

Yes! Hop is the beer flower!!
That's why you can bake with this one!

I knew the recipe from my grandma's stories and I was searching this recipe for years. One day I was in the book store and I opened for the first time a book that I already knew that existed but I have never opened.
It was in front of my eyes!!!

I am glad you know the experience of kneading with hands

So you know many things about bread!!!

As for the oven, yes I do have one. You know. You warm the oven with many woods and then you put them aside, you clean the surface with a cloth and you place the bread with no pan!
It's like the baking stones the boys here say
But I use it mainly in the winter because it's too hot in Greece in the summer to bake with woods.