Baking Bread

welcome, Zodcook

It depends on your recipe.  Italian bread, at least in italy, is regulated by law: flour, salt, yeast and water.  No sugar can be added.  Any additions (oil, sugar, milk, etc) and it becomes a specialty bread and has to be stated as such. 

I'm sure you'll get plenty of very precise baker's percentages,

my own recipe is

4 cups flour

1/4 tsp dry yeast

3 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup water

this is to do a bread that grows 18 to 24 hours in the first instance, then is kneaded very very briefly (ten turns) and then put to rise for an hour to two hours, then slit and put into a heavy covered pot, that has been heating up in a very hot oven (450 F)

but the long rising with the tiny amount of yeast makes for a really tasty bread that doesn't go bad for days. 

You can divide by two and get the amount for 2 cups flour. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by siduri 

welcome, Zodcook

 

It depends on your recipe.  Italian bread, at least in italy, is regulated by law: flour, salt, yeast and water.  No sugar can be added.  Any additions (oil, sugar, milk, etc) and it becomes a specialty bread and has to be stated as such. 

 

I'm sure you'll get plenty of very precise baker's percentages,

 

my own recipe is

4 cups flour

1/4 tsp dry yeast

3 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup water

And the flour that you use is???  Protein and ash content, please.  00 flour perhaps that can be difficult to find here in the states?  AP perhaps???

Actually, I've done this with all kinds of flour - 00, 0, something that they call Manitoba, occasionally 100% whole wheat and sometimes a mix of flours, with a little rye, a little oat, a little whole wheat, and white. 

Never noticed much difference in the results of the first 3, but then i don;t rely on measurements entirely, and if i see it's too dry, i put more water, and if it's wet, i add a little flour.  Il faut mettre le main dans le pate, (a sentence i've probably mangled) - you have to feel it. 

Ash content? does flour contain ash?  the manitoba is probably like bread flour, or like All purpose. 

the recipe was developed for all purpose flour, anyway.  it works, bread works, it's kind to us if we're adaptable. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by siduri 

 

Ash content? does flour contain ash?  the manitoba is probably like bread flour, or like All purpose.

Ash in flour, here ya' go:  http://www.theartisan.net/flour_ash_content.htm

Quote:

Originally Posted by siduri 
.. Il faut mettre le main dans le pate, (a sentence i've probably mangled) - you have to feel it.

If faut mettre LA MAIN A LA PATE.  The words 'main' (hand) and 'pate' (dough or paste as it were) are both feminine.  Not to bust you out or anything but I learned while at the Sorbonne that it's not impolite to correct someones foreign language skills.  8)  

Siduri's recipe looks great.  In any language!  

Not to overwhelm you, Zod, but you might look around http://www.thefreshloaf.com/ for videos and guidance.  One thing you'll discover is that volume measures for flour are imprecise, so any recipe that uses them is giving you a rough guideline.  (Moreover depending on how and where it's stored flour may also have some moisture in it.)  The key is getting used enough to the look and feel of the dough at various stages in the process that you can make your own adjustments.  Videos are helpful there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kokopuffs 

 

If faut mettre LA MAIN A LA PATE.  The words 'main' (hand) and 'pate' (dough or paste as it were) are both feminine.  Not to bust you out or anything but I learned while at the Sorbonne that it's not impolite to correct someones foreign language skills.  8)  

I knew it was probably wrong, thanks koko.

I;ve spoken italian for 37 years and heard it from childhood, but i will never be able to get the genders of the words right.  Hands being feminine, indeed! and in italian, one egg is masculine but two become feminine.  I have no problem with having my foreign language skills corrected!  the only way to learn. I was just being lazy anyway, i could have looked it up. 

delete delete delete

I would like permission oto post attachments.  Who do I contact????

Quote:

Originally Posted by siduri 

I knew it was probably wrong, thanks koko.

I;ve spoken italian for 37 years....

 

  And you're from where, originally?

From Boston, Mass.  If you could heah me speak, you'd know.  I pahk the cah and I take a bahth and i walk on a pahth and i'm a mummy, not a mommy to my kids. I drink frappes not shakes and breathe ayah  and i call coke and orangeade "tonic". .  Don't think the Kennedy accent, but think immigrant boston accent, like the irish and italians that settled there.  

I love seasons and love winter and waking up to the silence of a snowstorm and don't even mind shoveling snow, and i miss the fall and the changing of the winds, so you can smell the far-off north pole flying by on the air, and i love spring when it finally comes, wet with the smell of leaves soaking under piles of melting snow, like tea in the air.  Winter here is like fall, and spring comes in february when you wonder where winter was - very sad for me.  I'm such a new englander in my heart that the sunniness of sunny italy leaves me flat.

My parents were brought to the states as kids, and spoke a good deal of italian at home, though I never spoke a word.  Came to Rome in my 20s and stayed for reasons having nothing to do with the weather, the beauty or the crazy drivers.   I studied French (I should say "French") in high school but never was very good at it, and i put it in quotes because i remember clearly my french teacher teaching us how to pronounce:  "de is pronounced der"!

But not her fault i just couldn't get my head around grammatical genders. 

sorry, if this is too off topic you can edit me out.

Ingredients for a 6C loaf:

Poolish (allow to blossom for 8 - 10 hours):

The remaining ingredients: