Failed Again!

[Scottintexas]

You may have seen the post about making yeast breads lighter (although there were typos in the title). I tried to make kolaches again this weekend and they came out horribly. I wouldn't let my daughter give them to anyone because I didn't want anyone to know I made them! I tried a different recipe this time and got the same results as my previous attempt.

The recipe calls for doubling then breaking off pieces and rolling them into golf ball sized balls and letting them double again after which you push down the center for the filling, fill them and bake for 10 minutes. No kneading after the first rise. I guess I need to try another recipe. Does using a mixer have anything to do with the dough? Maybe I should have mixed with a spoon and my hands, though I don't see how that can matter.

I'd love a good recipe and instructions. One that someone has tried and tested.

Do you bake them on light or dark sheets?

[BettyR]

To make good yeast bread you need to understand what makes a good loaf of bread. A few months ago I started learning how to make bread, I asked for a good book and I was directed by the good people on this forum to “The Bread Bakers Apprentice” and it is a wonderful book…I would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn about bread.

Then I realized while I was reading the book that I really didn’t know what proper yeast dough was supposed to look or feel like. So I went out a bought myself an inexpensive bread machine. I used several different recipes some from the book that came with the machine and some that I found on-line but I never cooked the bread in the machine I always used the dough cycle then shaped my loaves, rolls or whatever I was making and baked them in my oven.

After a while of reading and using the bread machine I started to understand what went into making a good loaf of bread and I started making my own bread by hand. I now make a killer loaf bread and my family is nuts about my sausage and cheese kolaches.

If you have a live person who can teach you that would be the best but if you are going to have to teach yourself this is what I would recommend.

[chef joh]

Before you can make quality breads , you should read the Breads Bakers Apprentice.You have to develope the bread before you can bake it.Creating a glutenous web to trap the gas from the yeast.I would suggest you purchase several books to read so you can get a better understanding .There is a bakers percentage chart which you can use to develope bread recipes, but you should understand the process first.Good Luck

[m brown]

after you roll the dough out and fill it, let it rise again for 10-15 min.
bake it after that.

The dough needs another chance to do it's thing before hitting the oven.

[stir it up]

scott, glad you haven't given up.

I echo the advice to get a good book on technique. And a big bag of flour LOL. Go to the library if you have to, read the front sections where they give you general information on how bread works before jumping in to a recipe.

You will love baking bread, after you learn the basics of gluten, flour, yeast, etc. and how they all operate.

success and failure in bread has more to do with technique, and less to do with recipe. You could get a great kolache from any half-decent recipe after you master the technique and learn how to read the dough to see that it has what it needs for a good rise and beautiful texture.

Once you learn to do a "windowpane" test of your dough, and learn to create dough that has a good windowpane, you should not have any more failures.

I suspect your results can be from any of at least 6 different reasons, and probably multiples of them compounded. (not developing the gluten properly, insufficient hydration/too much flour, insufficient rise especially on the 2nd rise (but if the gluten structure isn't good, you won't get a good rise...) it gets too multifactorial to just say it's X, so I join in the chorus of getting a good bread book and reading up on the qualities of a good yeast dough). What chef joh says about creating a glutenous web to trap the gas from the yeast is very important, there are many factors that can optimize that.

Also, what flour are you using, bleached white all purpose? I prefer unbleached organic either bread or sometimes all purpose depending on the product. You can amend all purpose with a tiny bit of gluten flour to bring it up to a bread flour too. Though I don't mean to give the impression that it's just a matter of switching your flour, with the right techniques, you should get great kolaches from bleached white AP too.

It's not your mixer, you should be able to get good results from a mixer as well as kneading by hand.

Good luck, don't get discouraged, good kolaches will follow when you understand the dough.

[Elfin]

Boy, I sure think you've gotten some good advice here. I've done a lot of amateur experiementation with yeast and laminated doughs with sometimes good/sometimes bad results... mostly from my lack of understanding of what I did wrong. Now I am in baking school and finally getting some book knowledge of gluten development shed a lot of light on the entire process. I previously thought that successful bread structure was mostly dependent on yeast... wow, was I wrong, ir's really more about developing the gluten properly. I also did really dumb things to yeast doughs like dumping in sugar or salt, thinking it was no big deal... oops.

Not that book knowledge will fix everything, but now I feel that I at least have a fighting chance of diagnosing "why" it happened when I get a failure... which is key to turning it around into a success.