Hey all, recently I have endeavored on a mission to cook some more traditional bread - that is bread with only the universally required bread ingredients and cooked in an oven rather then a bread maker.
Know to start off I had to make a few compromises:
Ingredients:
Procedure:
How it turned out:
What I know I did wrong:
My Questions:
Thank you so much for taking the time, it is immensely appreciated. I don't have too much experiance as a chef - so what ever you can suggest will surely help!
Thanks again - I know it was a long post,
Haans
Know to start off I had to make a few compromises:
- I don't have a traditional dome shaped clay oven... Oh well.
- I'm intolerant to gluten, so I did not use wheat flour (I did use some rye flour however, which has gluten - less than wheat however; like I said I'm intolerant not allergic).
- I did not have a sourdough sponge (is that the right term?), so I went with dry active yeast.
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ cups warm water (about 110 °F)
- ¾ tsp sugar
- 1 ½ tsp dry active yeast
- 1 cup rye flour (home milled some organic rye berries with an electric mill)
- 3 cups "whole wheat flour imitation" (2 cups medium-grain rice - again home milled, 2/3 cup potato starch, 1/3 cup tapioca. Over the years I've found that this is a pretty good gluten-free substitute for wheat flour.)
- 1 ½ tsp salt
Procedure:
- In a large bowl mix the water, sugar, yeast, rye flour and ¾ cups "whole wheat flour imitation" together. Beat 100 strokes.
- Cover with a damp cloth and let sit for 1 hour (all rising occurred at just under 80 °F - on my porch. I hear you should not go over 80 °F with rye, since it ferments faster then wheat).
- Stir down and mix in the salt.
- Stir in the remaining flour ¼ cup at a time until dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
- Turn out and knead 15 minutes.
- Place dough in lightly greased bowl (I'm using a ceramic bowl by the way, it has sorta-gradual edges (as in not too steep)). Turn to coat.
- Cover with a damp cloth and let rise until double, about 1 hour.
- Punch down, turn out and knead 5 minutes.
- Shape into a slightly flattened round and place on a greased cookie sheet.
- Let rise for 45 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Bake loaf for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°F and bake for 45 minutes.
How it turned out:
- Pretty flat/round loaf, not too high.
- A little sticky on the inside (probably because of the rice... I used medium instead of short grain to try and avoid this, and long grain because I usually don't get great results with it).
- Pretty (very?) hard crust.
- It tasted pretty good though!
What I know I did wrong:
- It was my first time really kneading - on the first time that you knead the dough, it was sticking everywhere. All over my hands and cutting board (the board was slightly damp by the way, as a book told me to do to combat stickiness). I also hear that you're supposed to stop kneading if the dough gets sticky, well it was sticky from the start, so I also stopped too early... The second time you knead I did much better - but still not that well. This time I was equipped with a butter knife, which I used whenever the dough showed signs of sticking (it worked great). As during the first time, I also had some extra rye flour - that I put down on the cutting board to prevent sticking. Well what can I expect with a recipe so low in gluten? Oh well, I'll work on my kneading for next time.
- My oven wasn't moist like a traditional clay one, so I very lightly sprayed my bread a couple times with a little glass spray bottle (again what a book said to do). I think a tray would work better next time - I only remembered at the last moment however. (I also read on another thread that an iron skillet with ice cubes works well).
My Questions:
- Should I have let the yeast foam in the warm water before using it?
- Why was the crust hard?
- How should I implement sourdough - I would like to next time! (And what do you think about making a rice sourdough? (versus a rye one that is)).
- What did I do wrong! I left a lot of openish comments throughout this post, anything that you think I should do differently next time!
Thank you so much for taking the time, it is immensely appreciated. I don't have too much experiance as a chef - so what ever you can suggest will surely help!
Thanks again - I know it was a long post,
Haans
