I am now revisiting this experiment using my new Lakeland bread machine.
(BTW the Panasonic still works but the display segments are missing and
random, so it's almost impossible to tell what it says or what it's
doing. If anyone wants it for parts, let me know. Otherwise it will go
in the WEEE.)
So...I'm trying to emulate a bread sold by a local company as "Omega 3"
(because: seeds :-) and this is what it looks like:
http://silmaril.ie/images/IMG_20140222_172632.jpg
http://silmaril.ie/images/IMG_20140222_172721.jpg
I seem to have some of the right basic ingredient proportions, because
the taste was perfect, but the rise was poor and the top sank in the middle.
Last time, I bought some gluten and added 2 tbsp and it didn't have much
effect — some but not a lot. Then the Panasonic got sick, so there's
been a pause.
On 14/09/2017 02:13, ~misfit~ wrote:
[...]
> [...] As you can't manipulate time and temp all you can
> change to get it right is the mix of ingredients.
The new machine is programmable :-) so I can make up a combination of
rest/mix/rise/mix/rise/etc/bake (eventually)
> Obviously the main ingredient for this purpose is yeast (I don't add sugar
> to dough to "feed the yeast" and consider doing that to be an abomination -
> a perversion of the bread making process).
In this case the bought version of this bread that I'm trying to emulate
does taste a little bit sweet, so I do add 1tbsp sugar, but not to feed
the yeast; to make it taste slightly sweet.
> However another often overlooked factor is 'wetness'. A gloppier
> dough is a more active dough as the yeast, its food and its waste are
> more mobile.
I have a more gloppier one on the go right now, done in 30 mins but it's
not looking good — doesn't appear to have risen at all.
> The yeast gets more food and doesn't get inhibited by its own waste
> products. So wetter = faster and drier = slower. In a bread machine
> there's a fine line between under risen and over risen dough and it
> can be hard to find that line - especially if nobody tells you how to
> do so.
I need to find that by experimentation.
> Also ambient temperature affects how active the dough is and how fast it
> 'works'. Yes bread machines warm the dough during rise cycles by flicking
> the heating element on and off but they do it to a pre-programmed pattern
> and don't reference room temperature or inside temperature. So on a colder
> day it won't get as warm as it will on a warmer day.
You'd think that including an external thermometer wouldn't be very hard.
[snip large amount of massively useful information from Shaun and Janet]
I'm using 450g (1 lb) coarse brown stone-milled flour with 1 tsp dried
yeast, 25 g (1 oz) butter, and 320 ml (11 fl.oz) water, with a tbsp
brown sugar and a tsp salt.
If this flour is low in gluten (the bag uninformatively says just
"Wheat: contains gluten"), roughly how much gluten should I add?
Peter