Just plain bread?

[FrankZ]

I use a percentage for mine:

Flour 100%
Yeast 1.2%
Water 65%
Powdered Milk .66%
Fat 2.5%
Sugar 2.6%
Salt 1.9%

Google bakers percentage and that will get you moving along.

I also weigh my ingredients (in grams) and for 2 loaves I use 8 cups of flour (960g). My bread pans are 9.5 x 5.5 x 4 and I make nice big loaves.

Lately I have been doing 70% bread flour 30% white whole wheat.

If you can't find bread flour and need to use all purpose you may need to reduce the water by a couple % to account for the lower protein flour.

 

[cmarchibald]

I did a google search of white bread recipes and got lots of recipes including a lovely ciabatta bread recipe. Perhaps you don't want to limit yourself to Allrecipes. But I'm sure with so many folks snowed in today you will get lots of tried and true recipes here.

No you were right, when I googled it I came up with the one I'm now using....which was on AllRecipes. I always go to AR first because it's the most user friendly and it's very comprehensive. In this case it was just a little too comprehensive. Anyway I'm taking a shot on one of the ones I found but still hoping I get my hands on garlicjosh's recipe. And next time I won't start it late afternoon so I'm up all night babysitting rising dough. Thankfully I have the time to kill.

 

[cmarchibald]

I use a percentage for mine:

Flour 100%
Yeast 1.2%
Water 65%
Powdered Milk .66%
Fat 2.5%
Sugar 2.6%
Salt 1.9%

Google bakers percentage and that will get you moving along.

I also weigh my ingredients (in grams) and for 2 loaves I use 8 cups of flour (960g). My bread pans are 9.5 x 5.5 x 4 and I make nice big loaves.

Lately I have been doing 70% bread flour 30% white whole wheat.

If you can't find bread flour and need to use all purpose you may need to reduce the water by a couple % to account for the lower protein flour.

Interesting....I've never heard of that technique. I'd like to check it out, though.

 

[FrankZ]

I find it useful because I can scale it. Been playing with different sized loaves, and different hydrations. Lately I have been closer to 68% because of the wheat flour.

Your flours always add to 100%. For instance when I do a white wheat mix I do 70% bread flour (672g) and 30% white whole wheat (288g).

The other ingredients are a percentage for the flour weight (in this case 960g total).

So the water is is 653g (at a 68% hydration level).

If I want to scale back I have a spreadsheet that I can tell it how many cups of flour I want to use and it does the magic. I can also change percentages of the ingredients and have it deal with that as well.

 

[garlicjosh]

Frankz, that is impressive my friend. took me a minute to wrap my tired noodle around what you where saying..but in the end I was like "damn nice"

as for the issue with the animals...im of no help..im to busy laughing

 

[cmarchibald]

My cats are the worst!!! They LOVE bread! It's the craziest thing. They sell these amazing little yeast rolls here called pandesal....so freaking good. We go through a sack of about dozen rolls in a single day, so we only buy it every few weeks. But if we leave any pandesal in the bag on the counter overnight one of our cats will chew through the bag and munch on down. I thought it was a rat at first until I caught two of the little buggers in the act!

 

[chopper]

I just got on line, and read this entire thread. How wonderful it is to smell the bread baking! I was so happy to see that you had someone there to support you along the way. It is almost like having a friend in the kitchen with you to cheer you on! I think this forum is wonderful! Enjoy the bread.

 

[chopper]

I had a dog once that would leave meat on the counter, but would steel any bread or rolls!

 

[garlicjosh]

I just got on line, and read this entire thread. How wonderful it is to smell the bread baking! I was so happy to see that you had someone there to support you along the way. It is almost like having a friend in the kitchen with you to cheer you on! I think this forum is wonderful! Enjoy the bread.

haha I like that

I basically kept the page open the whole time and just refreshed it every 15 minutes or so just to see if any more help was needed.

 

[cmarchibald]

I had a dog once that would leave meat on the counter, but would steel any bread or rolls!

They're funny like that! One of my cats is nicknamed "meat monster". He's normally very, very chill, but you get some raw meat out and he starts yowling like he's not eaten in a year. Not to go too far off topic but.....

I defrost my meat in my small sink, and I learned pretty quickly that I have to cover it to keep the Meat Monster from helping himself. One time I covered the fish with a glass dish just to torture him. He was most displeased:

 

[chopper]

Beautiful cat! And...animal lovers are always OK with going off topic when it is about pets!

 

[msmofet]

I find it useful because I can scale it. Been playing with different sized loaves, and different hydrations. Lately I have been closer to 68% because of the wheat flour.

Your flours always add to 100%. For instance when I do a white wheat mix I do 70% bread flour (672g) and 30% white whole wheat (288g).

The other ingredients are a percentage for the flour weight (in this case 960g total).

So the water is is 653g (at a 68% hydration level).

If I want to scale back I have a spreadsheet that I can tell it how many cups of flour I want to use and it does the magic. I can also change percentages of the ingredients and have it deal with that as well.

I can't for the life of me figure out the weights from a percentage!! I guess I'm STUPID!!

I have a scale can you please email me the spread sheet with the formulas already set up in it? And a quick how to on using it. I have many flours I use I used to just start with 5 lbs of AP and the add the rest till it looked right. I used 3 packets of yeast or 8 tsp if I had loose yeast about 1 tsp sugar to proof and water. It is always good but I have no formal recipe. I just eye ball it like Mom always did.

These are the flours and other things I put in my bread dough:

• Unbleached All- purpose flour
• (Regular) Whole wheat flour
• White whole wheat flour
• Rye flour
• Soy flour
• Peanut flour
• Flaxseed meal
• Uncooked Rolled oats - ground into "flour" consistency
• Wheat germ
• Dry Powdered milk

I really want to make a proper recipe with exact weights for my girls because they just don't have that instinct like grandma, aunts, mom and I had/have. They need it all spelled out.

Please help. LOL

 

[FrankZ]

I will need to clean up the spreadsheet a bit, as I have all sorts of side stuff in it and it is in "frank logic" which is to say it will confuse you, as it confuses me and I was the one that wrote it.

With percentages it is all based on flour weight. If you have 1000g of flour on a 65% hydration bread it is 650g of water (1000g * .65 = 650g).

My spread sheet does not calculate backwards though, which is to say, you can't ask for a certain weight of dough and get it to tell you how much flour, and consequently, how much everything else. I should had a work page for that at some point.

 

[joesfolk]

You guys are making me want to bake bread today. Unfortunately I don't have any fresh yeast in the house and we are snowed in. I wish I had thought about bread baking yesterday because this is the perfect day for warming the house up and letting dough rise.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Try some of the recipes at King Arthur Flour. They have a lot of basic bread recipes.

 

[msmofet]

I will need to clean up the spreadsheet a bit, as I have all sorts of side stuff in it and it is in "frank logic" which is to say it will confuse you, as it confuses me and I was the one that wrote it.

With percentages it is all based on flour weight. If you have 1000g of flour on a 65% hydration bread it is 650g of water (1000g * .65 = 650g).

My spread sheet does not calculate backwards though, which is to say, you can't ask for a certain weight of dough and get it to tell you how much flour, and consequently, how much everything else. I should had a work page for that at some point.

Thank you. I don't care about dough weight. Just how much of each flour/grain to how much water etc. I can then decide how many loaves/size or pizza dough etc. Anything would be appreciated.

 

[garlicjosh]

Try some of the recipes at King Arthur Flour. They have a lot of basic bread recipes.

I agree.
Also, Red Star Yeast has a lot too.
I'm friends with them on Facebook and they post something amazing everyday.

speaking of all things bread...I am now the proud owner of two pounds of yeast..i like when i get kitchen stuff in the mail

 

[FrankZ]

2 pounds? Good lord that would take me a while go get through. I use between 7 and 12 grams when making sandwich bread, for two loaves.

 

[cmarchibald]

haha I like that

I basically kept the page open the whole time and just refreshed it every 15 minutes or so just to see if any more help was needed.

I just got on line, and read this entire thread. How wonderful it is to smell the bread baking! I was so happy to see that you had someone there to support you along the way. It is almost like having a friend in the kitchen with you to cheer you on! I think this forum is wonderful! Enjoy the bread.

I totally agree! My hubby and I are both avid forum browsers and we're pretty well accustomed to the "trolls" that normally occupy online communities. I was just marveling about this forum to him earlier this evening. He's every bit as amazed as I am that people in this community are so helpful without being snide. It's such a rarity in the "online" world. So I'm thankful to you guys!

Anyway it's 1am here and I'm still waiting on my final rise to be "good enough". I only have 2 bread pans and the recipe produced 3 loaves worth, so I took the remaining third and put into a muffin tin to make some yeast rolls. Since I'm experimenting I thought I'd cook the yeast rolls first to see if the dough was "ready". They came out pretty good but I do think I need to let it rise a bit longer.

My hubby was trying to keep the vigil with me but he gave up and went to bed. I'm hoping I can reward him with some yummy fresh bread in the morning!

 

[chopper]

I totally agree! My hubby and I are both avid forum browsers and we're pretty well accustomed to the "trolls" that normally occupy online communities. I was just marveling about this forum to him earlier this evening. He's every bit as amazed as I am that people in this community are so helpful without being snide. It's such a rarity in the "online" world. So I'm thankful to you guys!

Anyway it's 1am here and I'm still waiting on my final rise to be "good enough". I only have 2 bread pans and the recipe produced 3 loaves worth, so I took the remaining third and put into a muffin tin to make some yeast rolls. Since I'm experimenting I thought I'd cook the yeast rolls first to see if the dough was "ready". They came out pretty good but I do think I need to let it rise a bit longer.

My hubby was trying to keep the vigil with me but he gave up and went to bed. I'm hoping I can reward him with some yummy fresh bread in the morning!

Hubby is a lucky man! I am getting hungry. I just took jar of yeast out of the fridge to warm up. It is great day---I am making bread! I am out of whole wheat flour. White it is. I can't wait to mix it, kneed it, let it rize, bake it, smell it, and eat it! I hope there is still some left for my hubby when he gets home.