Baking a Better Loaf of Bread

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/oct/10/flour-power-meet-the-bread-heads-baking-a-better-loaf

by blue_devil • 7 years ago

238 136 7 years ago

theguardian.com

grumpydba• 7 years ago

How to bake a better loaf: https://youtu.be/8B_7AFYmkYo

kop3164• 7 years ago

If home baking interests you, I have three suggestions:

- Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish

- The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart

- The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion

Having never baked anything complex before, those books have been amazing in learning how to bake. The bread is amazing and tastes as good as a small bakery.

Ken Forkish also makes a book called "The Elements of Pizza" and shows you how to make Italian, NY, and several over styles of pizza too. That in my opinion is a must have book if you want to make Pizza.

resters• 7 years ago

Going to read those, but meanhile, any tips on proofing that you can offer here on HN?

blue_devil2• 7 years ago

Keep your dough warm and cosy by wrapping it up. Conversely, if you live in a hot climate, put your dough in the fridge so as not to overproof it.

kop3164• 7 years ago

Proofing? Control your temp and time if possible. Understand that a cooler temp will mean a longer proof. But also a longer proof gives you a more yeasty flavor.

The first book flour water salt yeast was the first book I got, and they really help you learn how to bake yeast breads.

throwaway8879• 7 years ago

It took me somewhere around 10 tries until I baked my first perfect bread. My overall advice would be to knead really well, unless you're doing a no-knead bread. As to your question about proofing, be gentle, let it rest in a warm spot for a fair length of time - but not too long so as to let it collapse. A lot of this will depend on the weather where you are.

awinder• 7 years ago

Many ovens have proof settings but they are basically just turning the light on and maybe running the circulator fan. That’s basically all I’ve needed for the minority of recipes I use that kinda require that. Most recipes don’t need anything other than time and a moderately temperatured kitchen, like the difference between 72°F and 80°F for most recipes just means a little extra time at the lower temperature.

Basically what I’m saying is don’t buy a fancy proofing set up, maybe use the oven with the light bulb on, but probably just make sure you leave good time / wake up earlier ;-).

xattt• 7 years ago

I’ve used the Cooks Illustrated recommendation of 3 cups of boiled water in a bread pan in an oven on a lower rack to make a makeshift proof box.

hnick• 7 years ago

It's not what most people think of as bread but I tried Nancy's Silverton's pizza dough and enjoyed it a lot (link below).

We did a test and letting it sit in the fridge covered for 3-4 days definitely improved it over the suggested same-day use in the recipe. A longer, slower rise seems to be the trend if you can find the time, and the fridge ensures a consistent temperature. It also made it easier to work with, the recipe was quite wet (I've heard wetter is better for pizza dough but it was super sticky).

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/nancy-silvertons...

joshvm3• 7 years ago

Being consistent helps, that way you know whether its a technique problem or under/over-proofing. I live in a poorly insulated house and baking bread over winter is a pain. I ended up making my own proofing box - way cheaper than buying an off-the-shelf chamber (some of which are $100+).

Get an expanded polystyrene crate [1], the sort of things market traders use, a seedling mat and a relay thermostat. Wire together and you have a reasonably accurate climate controlled box. The box will be the most expensive thing, but I bought a very large one (too large, to be honest) and it was about £35. For a single loaf, you only need an interior volume enough to fit something a standard plastic food container [3]. A 4L container will barely do a 1kg batch, so size up.

This is essentially the design that Noma use in their fermentation book [2]. Hint: you can see the design in the preview on Google Books (page 42).

I set mine around 26-27C for bread, seems to work quite well. I've not bothered to measure how accurate the setpoint is.

[1] https://hydropac.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/deluxe-1.j... [2] https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Noma_Guide_to_Fer... [3] https://www.nisbets.co.uk/cambro-square-polycarbonate-food-s...

jillesvangurp2• 7 years ago

I also started out doing my own pizza dough. I used some youtube tutorials to work my up to baking my own sourdough breads. I've had some interesting failures along the way but I'm getting consistently good results now. Making your own bread is pretty easy, cheap, and very tasty. Using a decent quality flour helps. If you are interested in that stuff, Alex French Guy cooking has a no nonsense introduction to making your own sourdough up on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLURsDaOr8hWWSiMZBLGP2...

There are a gazillion similar videos out there but this one is pretty informative and he's a bit of a food hacker.

ImprovedSilence• 7 years ago

I've found Jeff varasanos pizza recipe to be an excellent baker-nerd read, and is the basis for all my pizza (mis)adventures: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

jorblumesea• 7 years ago

Flour Water Salt Yeast is amazing. Transformed my view and understanding of bread.

semi-extrinsic• 7 years ago

Maybe ~10 years ago, a friend bought Peter Reinhart's BBA and I got his "Whole Grain Breads" book. We baked lots, swapped recipes and experiences. I can strongly recommend both books; obviously the Whole Grain one is better if that's your cup of tea, etc.

Regarding what TFA mentions of "gluten intolerance" - I think it's hard from a biochemistry perspective, based purely on what concentrations we're talking about, to support the hypothesis that the vital wheat gluten is a culprit. My personal theory is that it's a combination of fermentability of what you eat (which is obviously lower in "proper" bread) and mechanical properties that causes problems for people who are "gluten intolerant" but not celiac. (Just to clarify, by putting "gluten intolerant" into scare quotes, I don't mean to say it's not a real thing. Just that I personally don't think gluten is the actual bad guy.)

kop3164• 7 years ago

I'll have to look the whole grains book up, thank you! The bread bakers apprentice is an awesome book, I look there for recipes for new breads.

Finnucane• 7 years ago

In addition to those books, Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread is an excellent resource.

MegaDeKay7• 7 years ago

Indeed. "Bread" is not just a book of recipes, but a valuable resource in learning how this stuff actually works. The breadth of techniques in the book is also much greater than most.

samstave2• 7 years ago

reading the reviews I really want that book, but I don’t know why, I have never tried to actually make bread.

That should be the first thing one should learn to cook. To make some bread.

kop3164• 7 years ago

I encourage you to!

I used to not really know how to cook, but my fiancée has been encouraging me to. Its like any skill. At first you just feel overwhelmed, but you gradually learn more and more how to cook and make better food. It's also really exciting to take something and make it from scratch.

My only disappointment now when I cook is it makes eating out much more difficult. I get really disappointed when I go eat something that I know I could have made better.

yhager2• 7 years ago

Tartine by Chad Robertson was THE book for me. It took me from so-so sourdough bread, to amazing and consistent one that constantly gets praise and is a pleasure every time.

shalmanese• 7 years ago

The video he did for Bon Appetit is masterful: https://youtu.be/U4dyWZZVeWI

ryanwaggoner• 7 years ago

I heartily second the recommendation for both of Forkish's books. I picked them up last summer, based on a comment here on HN. Getting my first decent loaf took a few tries, but now I bake all of our bread, whether artisanal or just sandwich bread. I usually bake with my 4-year-old daughter, and I've also been baking more desserts as well, for which I often use recipes from King Arthur Flour or Cook's Illustrated. Just made cinnamon rolls the other day. We also make pizzas every month or two, for which I can't recommend a pizza steel highly enough (unless you're lucky enough to have a home pizza oven that can reach 900 degrees).

elbasti2• 7 years ago

FWSY is a great introduction to bread baking, but I think it's important to move beyond it pretty quickly. I find it quite joyless.

As an example, there's a recipe that calls for 3/16th teaspoons of yeast. Why didn't he just write 1/4 tsp? There is no way that 1/16ths of a teaspoon make any sort of difference given all the other factors at play. This kind of faux precision abounds in the book and can make the activity pretty stressful.

It's a great introduction to bread baking, but once you get the hang of things you realize the precision he requires in his recipes is simply not called for. You can bake great bread in less time, or more time, or with cooler water, or warmer water of whatever--and have more fun doing it. (Also, his sourdough recipe is criminally wasteful).

To anyone trying to get into bread: Definitely use FWSY to get a better "feel" for dough, but as soon as you do I suggest you leave it behind. Have fun. Tartine is a great second book.

heelix• 7 years ago

You get goofy measurements like that when someone takes the time to measure what a dash of this, a pinch of that, and a tad of something else into a non-eyeballed, quantifiable amounts. And yes, some times you have to be exact, sometimes... not so much. Cooking is organic chemistry. :P

dceddia• 7 years ago

Having used that book and gotten some great bread out of it, and then "messed up" the recipes a few times and had the bread still turn out great, I agree. I don't think the precision is as important as it implies.

I think the oddly precise teaspoon measurements are a side effect of converting from weights, though. Early on he recommends measuring ingredients by weight, and I vaguely remember him saying that the volume measurements were really just a backup if you absolutely couldn't use a scale.

fluffy87• 7 years ago

Do you have a link to the Tartine book? There are dozens of book by that name on amazon.

joshvm3• 7 years ago

Tartine is a great book that will make you hate every almost perfect loaf that you bake. It's well written and well photographed, though it can be difficult to follow at times. Although Chad goes to an effort to explain how the recipe can adapt to any schedule, it's still a huge amount of effort - you start on Friday night and don't get a loaf until Sunday.

It's also very difficult the first time you work with such high hydration doughs, and I would suggest watching:

Chad on Bon Apetit - to see how he actually does it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4dyWZZVeWI

Sourdough on It's Alive, good fun and educational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oidnwPIeqsI

I also have the River Cottage Handbook on Bread which I strongly recommend for practical recipes.

Also buy a crock pot or a combo cooker. By far the simplest way to get amazing looking bread.

asciident• 7 years ago

Could you help me reverse engineering a bread I had, because I have no idea how to search for this. I had some grey-brown colored bread (looked like dinner rolls) in Greece that tasted so much more "real" than any American fancy bread I have had. It was firstly uniformly dry, like it sucked the moisture out of my mouth. Then it was very earthy, making my memories of american bread feel like they had sugar in it; this bread tasted like a fragrant earthy rock. Yet it was easy to eat, did not cut/scratch my mouth. What kind of recipe/process goes into making bread like that? I may be exaggerating a bit, but I do remember this was a very unique taste and feel.

kensai• 7 years ago

Pita?

elbasti2• 7 years ago

Ah. You're looking for "rusk". Google "Greek rusks" and you might find something that approximates the shadow of what you had.

tmikaeld2• 7 years ago

Actually tried making sourdough bread at home, the taste and texture eventually became so superior that we don't want to buy bread in the store any more.

Sure, there are "sourdough" bread in the store, but they always add ordinary yeast to speed up the process, tastes nothing near the real thing.

There did open a new sourdough bakery in the city that does it correctly, however, a single loaf cost 7€.

tunnuz• 7 years ago

Same same, my partner got me a sourdough book in april, I have baked maybe 30 loaves since then. I got to a level of quality that there is no reason to buy bread anymore and it feels that store bought bread is not great when we do.

tmikaeld2• 7 years ago

I think we're at a similar number, I don't remember when we started but it was around the same time.

We also tried different types of flour, at first we used ordinary flour but it didn't taste right (bad fermentation too).

Now we use whole-grain for the fermentation stages and then a mixture of stone-milled flour and a little whole-grain during the baking process. Going from ordinary to organic flour also made a difference, especially with the fermentation reaction. We have gotten a few bugs in the flour though, but it's kind of expected, especially on the stone-milled types.

bmurphy1976• 7 years ago

What recipe do you primarily use?

WomanCanCode• 7 years ago

This article reminds me of a documentary on Netflix about how we prefer to grow surpluses of lower quality wheat crops in the US that has higher yield output. I wonder if we will ever go back to quality as oppose to quantity ….

maxnoe• 7 years ago

As a German, this deeply irritates me. People have not eaten proper bread since "generations"?

WTF?

mosselman• 7 years ago

I love German bread. Whenever we are in Germany we load up on all sorts of great loads and freeze them at home. I am from the Netherlands where the bread it generally fine, but boring. German bread is much more refined and outspoken.

gempir• 7 years ago

Yea as a german this is crazy. Everytime I go on holiday outside germany I notice how much the bread is lacking. Yes France might have nice baguettes but it's missing the whole grain breads, sourdough etc. Other countries have other strengths but germany has such a giant selection in "dark" breads it's always amazing.

rayiner2• 7 years ago

Wholegrain, sourdough bread is a very different beast; crunchy, crusty, chewy, with a complex taste that is rich, nutty and tangy. Quite often, I find a couple of thick slices, spread with a generous swathe of butter, a satisfying lunch.

What sanctimony! For my part, I recently discovered Trader Joe’s Canadian White bread. Such a revelation after being subjected to modern bread filling with random seeds and whatnot. Seeds are for birds!

icebraining• 7 years ago

You should be careful about letting a reasonable aversion to hipsterism become a tic. There's nothing sanctimonious about finding wholegrain sourdough bread tasty and processed bread flavorless (and it is; there's a reason the bread you buy has honey, vinegar, buttermilk and a bunch of other ingredients).

rayiner2• 7 years ago

The preference is not inherently sanctimonious, though it is in the minority—over 80% of bread sales are white bread. But the article was certainly written in a sanctimonious. Asserting “my politics are better and the bread I like is tastier” is certainly sanctimonious. (Either one standing alone would be fine.)

sm4rk0• 7 years ago

As a hacker, I especially like this project: https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code

mrob• 7 years ago

I dislike these trendy breads. They have excessively hard crusts and large holes, both of which I consider defects. My favorite bread is made with low hydration dough (50% water by baker's percentage, i.e. percent of flour weight) for a dense crumb, and cooked by steaming for an extra-soft crust. The trendy recipes also have too much salt, which masks the flavor of the fermentation products. IMO 1% salt by baker's percentage is sufficient. Sourdough is helpful for adding flavor to wholegrain or non-wheat breads, but for standard white bread I find it never develops much sourness, and long proofing with standard dried yeast is just as good.

Try experimenting with recipes yourself instead of just copying what's popular. I think a lot of bread recipes are designed to make good looking bread, rather than bread that's enjoyable to eat.

thisone• 7 years ago

to each their own. I don't like low hydration, dense breads, and I do like high hydration airy breads.

because that's what I like eating, not because that's what's pretty.

samstave2• 7 years ago

I find this video on “Nordic Nut Bread” something I really want to try to make.

https://youtu.be/BzxmIdw5oDc

I really agree with you on holes in bread, do not want.

But you may find the nut bread interesting..

nuxi• 7 years ago

In my experience, the large holes will not form if you add low-gluten flour (rye, buckwheat, oat) to the mix, even with higher hydration. I make a 100%-rye bread with flax seeds that is very dense, although highly hydrated (100-110%!). Furthermore, it needs no proofing, only a single rise in a bread pan. The crust is not that hard and can be softened further by wrapping the hot bread in a kitchen towel. Another plus is that this type of bread will not dry out or spoil for over a week (I keep it wrapped in a towel). As for the salt, I agree - 1% should be plenty.

Pfhreak2• 7 years ago

They have excessively hard crusts and large holes, both of which I consider defects.

I can't disagree with this enough. Gimme that hard, crispy crust with a good ear. And lots of good holes.

Although, my crumb always ends up even and fairly dense. No clue what to change to open it up. (Even with 70%+ hydration).

Tarrosion• 7 years ago

Most likely cause of a dense crumb is underproofing, though a too-cold oven won't help either.

The most likely cause of a tight (but not dense) crumb is knocking too much air out during shaping. You can try varying the ratio of bulk ferment time to proofing time and see if that helps as well.

MegaDeKay7• 7 years ago

70% hydration is not super high. Tartine is around 75%, IIRC. But if your bread is "fairly dense" you might have other problems. You might find this bread troubleshooter useful. It shows pictures of various crumbs and what the probable cause of the problem is.

https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/troubleshoot-bad-bread-m...

globular-toast• 7 years ago

Yeah, I agree. It seems to happen a lot when one culture attempts to copy another. The artifact will be analysed and reduced to a few properties which are then optimised. The article talks about how British Chorleywood bread was optimised for price and how that's not right. Well, guess what, optimising food for anything except eating pleasure won't be good either.

It happened to beer. Americans discovered the centuries-old brewing traditions of Britain and Belgium and then turned the characteristics up to 11. What you get is beer brewed with so much hop it's just not pleasant any more. And so much malt that it now has to be sipped like wine. And in the end you've just got yourself another hyper-optimised product.

Some of these hipster loaves have crusts so tough that I'm seriously concerned about my teeth. But, hey, the baker has been learning how to make that gluten network even stronger so it must be good. The holes are so large it reminds me of atomic structure of matter: more empty space than bread. I can't spread butter on air. Nor can I hold cheese with a something tougher than shoe leather.

At the end of the day there is one thing that matters: is it nice to eat? If you go to France and find a boulangerie on any street corner in the country you will find a baguette. I could tell you about what makes it a baguette---the soft French, unbleached flour; the Viennese steam oven, the cultured yeast, and so on---but none of that really matters. What matters is it tastes wonderful, it feels great, and it works well with other foods. In short, it's a joy.

blue_devil2• 7 years ago

Here're a couple videos about Prof Wolfe's method:

Wheat Populations at Wakelyns Agroforestry Farm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDV_tLmeeFE

The story of Wakelyns Agroforestry https://vimeo.com/256082580

hn_throwaway_99• 7 years ago

One thing I love about France. Delicious bread is everywhere. Even the corner convenience store sells a wider variety and tastier selection of fresh bread than many grocery stores in the US.

wiredfool2• 7 years ago

I’ve been in France for a couple of months now, and I’ve found _one_ loaf that was up there with what I could get in a supermarket in Seattle, from essential baking or grand central.

There’s a lot of indifferent baguettes, and other basically white bread country loafs.

SECProto• 7 years ago

I don't think I've heard "indifferent baguettes" used as a descriptor of bread in France before. What makes them indifferent in your opinion? In my very brief experience the baguette were fresh, fantastic texture, cheap, and widely available.

You're not going to get the loaves you might want, but you have to assess things as they are, not how they compare to what you want. As an example, I lived in Japan for several years. I like crunchy crusts, flavourful sourdough, etc. But the bread scene in Japan is mostly incredibly airy white, buttery crust, focus on pastries etc. I try not to criticize the bread as being boring airy whites, but rather compliment the pastries on their strengths.

wikibob• 7 years ago

Where are you shopping? Proper indépendant boulangeries? Or Carrefour and Auchan?

gniv• 7 years ago

Make sure you buy "baguette tradition", which are quite different from the ones sold in supermarkets.

bluedino2• 7 years ago

I love baking bread, but it's hard to argue with the $2.99 loaf from La Brea in the "bakery" at the local Kroger.

Animats• 7 years ago

Artisanal bread making. How it's really done.[1] Note how much takes place before baking.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qm_iHgFsPw

ip265• 7 years ago

Quite often, I find a couple of thick slices, spread with a generous swathe of butter, a satisfying lunch.

Who are these people? I would be hungry again within ten minutes. (BMI of ~19)

kupopuffs• 7 years ago

You just need to eat more bread

yhager2• 7 years ago

It's sourdough bread. It's way more filling then your average supermarket-bought white.

ip265• 7 years ago

I bake my own. A quarter loaf might serve as an appetizer.

trhway• 7 years ago

Age. 30 years ago I would do a half or almost whole loaf with the butter and sweet tea. At 47 that couple of thick slices amounting to the quarter loaf does it.

Wrt. bread making - from my short summer stint at a bakery in a remote village in USSR back then (these days you'd call it a craftsman/artisanal given what and how it was done there) - good bread takes less sugar and more time to rise like 12 hours. Industrial quickrise - 2 hours with a lot of added sugar - is in my view one of the major factors behind the current onslaught of GI, diabetes and autoimmunes.

downtide• 7 years ago

Due to a broken oven, I've ended up using a breadmaker, and although the results are middle of the road, the simplicity of making a loaf is super. Just throw in the ingredients, set timer, wake to the smell of cooking bread. The kneading is a bit weedy and I get better results by hand. But the breadmaker makes no mess at all.

dev_dull2• 7 years ago

I think the bread maker was ahead of its time.

dev_dull2• 7 years ago

Using bread flour really is one of those things that’s easy to miss but often times discourages first time bakers. The gluten makes a HUGE difference in the crumb and mouthfeel.

Also tip for other busy bakers like myself that don’t want to keep two types of flour stocked. Keep some vital wheat gluten in the freezer and throw in a teaspoon or two with each cup of AP flour. Instant bread flour!

sircastor• 7 years ago

I've been baking breads regularly for the better part of a decade, and I just learned about Vital wheat Gluten this last year. I was blown away. What an incredibly useful tool!

bluedino2• 7 years ago

This is a great recipe to start out with if you'd like to start making your own bread:

https://artisanbreadinfive.com/2013/10/22/the-new-artisan-br...

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

A question one of you bread fans may be able to answer. My daughter has what we thought was a gluten intolerance, she recently went to Italy though and can eat their bread and pasta fine. Coming back to Australia, and eating bread here - same reaction, she's found a deli that imports Italian bread and can eat that. I've looked at the ingredients list and nothing leaps out, one thing I was thinking maybe the wheat is different and so the Gluten is a slightly different shape maybe, any of you folk know what the difference could be?

punnerud2• 7 years ago

I read last year that it is not gluten that most people with “gluten allergic” is reacting to, but a protein that normally is found within “gluten”. They are now starting to produce gluten without this protein. Could be that this is the reason.

Just like milk-protein and lactose intolerance/allergic is two different things.

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

maybe, any links? Its puzzling why bread from Italy is OK, maybe they use a different strain of wheat was one thought I had. I've even tried baking my own bread, additive free, but same reaction.

jamesrom• 7 years ago

You should do a double-blind experiment. Isolate the human variable first. That said, I would not be surprised if there was something in the way Italian wheat is grown/processed that is the important factor.

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

Yes, I've never done a true double blind. That said though, she also went to France and Spain, it was only the Italian bread she could eat. The Italians seem very protective about using the ancient grains, so yes there is an effect, but its clearly not gluten. Australia is very keen on using the modern grains with high yield so its probably something else in the grains.

MayeulC• 7 years ago

Coming from France, finding out that there is added sugar in most products abroad (corn syrup, fructose, lactose, etc), including bread shocked me (I mean, even in mustard... which is alien to me). That may be a lead to follow?

Or that may be due to different yeasts? I'd suggest she tries to bake with imported ingredients, then local ones, and mix/match to find the culprit.

viburnum2• 7 years ago

I have comment on this post that might answer your question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21243525

Basically some whole wheat flour is heavily processed and reconstituted.

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

wow, thanks, that is disturbing reading. Its probably not a surprise that some of this food would upset someones stomach.

Edit: I did try making bread with an organic stone ground flour some years ago though and that didn't help.

ReptileMan• 7 years ago

FODMAPS - olygoscharids that are very hard to digest. Proper fermentation reduces them. I guess the italian bread is just properly fermented and leavened.

Here is fun experiment - try her tolerance towards the simplest no knead bread made at home with long cold proofing. Like 48-72 hours. Or good proper artisanal sourdough - if she can tolerate them better you have a good piece of the puzzle.

And pasta gluten is quite different anyway from the bread one. It is made from durum wheat which is very hard and I think its gluten lacked the elasticity of the bread one.

Does she likes eats a lot fermented foods - like sourkraut and real yogurt? They have been shown to help with stomach microbiome.

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

Does she likes eats a lot fermented foods - like sourkraut and real yogurt? They have been shown to help with stomach microbiome.

Sometimes, might be time to investigate these to, thanks

Edit: on the sourdough front there is some strange results, I tried an artisanal organic sourdough from a bakery that takes their bread very seriously, and she reacts to that (however, I really like it, so a bit of a bonus for me there :-) ), strangely there is a rye sourdough she gets from the supermarket and she can eat that fine. Its a puzzling set of reactions. Howvever, the good news is its not gluten its something else that can be isolated.

pacifist• 7 years ago

Try grinding your own flour from organically grown wheat and baking bread with that. I'm guessing she won't have a problem with it since this is essentially what is going on in Italy. They just call it making bread there.

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

I have tried organic stone ground flour bought from the organic shop, grinding my own might be a bit beyond me, but may be worth investigating.

ip265• 7 years ago

If you can bake bread with wheat from an Italian grocery store and it doesn't cause her any problems, you could probably then narrow it down to the variety of wheat. There are actually quite a few, and they can be very different. Do run some kind of blind trial though, as another poster mentioned.

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

yes that seems like the approach to take, much good advice from the HN folk

corey_moncure• 7 years ago

I am personally invested in this question also.

Some have drawn a correlation between the use of organophosphates (one infamous compound in particular) and the rising incidence of celiac and gluten intolerance diagnosis in the USA. It may be something to look into.

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

Searching around and ended up here https://natalinaskitchen.com/pizza-flour-00-from-italy-or-ca... someone in the comments has had the same experience:

As an fyi, I have stopped eating Whole grain bread due to Gluten Intolerance symptoms. However Gluten-Free bread for the most part also seems to me, Flavour-free as well! However when I have travelled to Italy/France I have had no symptoms and enjoyed pizzas, pastas and croissants with out problem. I recently picked up two products – one is La Cappicella Pasta, sold through PC which is made in Italy with Durham flour and ACE Bakery’s Non-GMO Baguette….and have had no symptoms or problems. I’ve heard it before that the preservatives and non-clumping additives etc are what can contribute to a lot of GI symptoms and I seem to be experiencing that. So pleased there are some products out there that don’t make those of us with problems like that experience pain when we eat!

sshumaker• 7 years ago

Glyphosate, perhaps?

GordonS• 7 years ago

Random thought - I like to bake cakes with the kids, so I always have flour in the cupboard, but seldom yeast.

I've looked, but even flatbread recipes I've found seem to include yeast - is there such a thing as bread without yeast?

chadcmulligan10• 7 years ago

There's a classic Australian bread - Damper that's made without Yeast, it just uses self raising flour as a raising agent. https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/damper/80391c40-8eab-4e67-9... Its great to make when camping

betterbeehome• 7 years ago

I find damper hard to digest compared to normal bread.

lkschubert8• 7 years ago

I know this isn't without yeast, but you can start the development of your own sourdough culture without added yeast.

diablerouge• 7 years ago

I purchased a large package of instant dry yeast and keep it in the fridge, in a mason jar. It lasts essentially indefinitely (I've had it for _years_.)

Part of the reason it's hard to use chemical leaveners in breads is that they only provide so much lift. A yeasted bread can go through multiple proofings and risings.

maxerickson• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_bread

bluthru• 7 years ago

Soda bread, but just buy some instant yeast and keep it in a jar in the fridge: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0001CXUHW/

shaklee3• 7 years ago

You can store yeast in the freezer for over a year, so it shouldn't be too much of a burden to buy it.

mikro2nd2• 7 years ago

Random thought: Since you're a cake baker, that's probably going to be Cake Flour you have in your cupboard -- lower protein (gluten) content than bread flours, so you might want to get in some Bread Flour instead.

MegaDeKay7• 7 years ago

Salt rising bread qualifies, though you are unlikely to make it. It is a bit of a process, can be a little fussy, and the taste is somewhat unusual (though I like it a lot). In the words of noted food writer, Harold McGee:

"I've recently come across a fringe fermentation method that, unlike the breads and brews and yogurts and pickles and misos we know and love, isn't run by the usual benign microbes. The engine behind this fermentation method is Clostridium perfringens, a close relative of bacteria that cause botulism, tetanus, and food poisoning. It can eat flesh. It gives gas gangrene its name by causing putrefying flesh wounds that bubble and foam with flammable hydrogen. And it can make something surprisingly delicate and tasty."

https://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-ki...

geden• 7 years ago

By bizarre coincidence I bumped into my neighbours yesterday, they’d just arrived back from Tuxford Mill after reading the Guardian article. We live only 15 mins away.

I’ve been buying Tuxford Mill porridge oats from for a few years. Going to try my hand at sourdough now!

viburnum2• 7 years ago

I really enjoyed this article. I remember reading about the WSU Bread Lab etc a few years ago and it was great to get an update. Here are two older articles about bread that I really liked (both feature the Bread Lab):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/bread-is-broken....

Here's a quote that explains what the deal is with the whole wheat bread you can buy in America:

A grain of wheat has three main components: a fibrous and nutrient-rich outer coating called the bran; the flavorful and aromatic germ, a living embryo that eventually develops into the adult plant; and a pouch of starch known as the endosperm, which makes up the bulk of the grain. Before roller mills, all three parts were mashed together when processed. As a result, flour was not the inert white powder most of us are familiar with today; it was pungent, golden and speckled, because of fragrant oils released from the living germ and bits of hardy bran. If freshly ground flour was not used within a few weeks, however, the oils turned it rancid.

Roller mills solved this problem. Their immense spinning cylinders denuded the endosperm and discarded the germ and bran, producing virtually unspoilable alabaster flour composed entirely of endosperm. It was a boon for the growing flour industry: Mills could now source wheat from all over, blend it to achieve consistency and transport it across the nation without worrying about shelf life. That newfound durability came at a huge cost, however, sacrificing much of the grain’s flavor and nutrition. In the 1940s, to compensate for these nutritional deficiencies, flour producers started fortifying white flour with iron and B vitamins, a ubiquitous practice today. The rise of roller milling and bread factories also put pressure on plant breeders to make wheat even more amenable to the new dominant technologies; whiteness, hardness and uniformity took precedence over flavor, nutrition and novelty.

Today, whole-wheat flour accounts for only 6 percent of all flour produced in the United States. And most whole-wheat products sold in supermarkets are made from roller-milled flour with the germ and bran added back in.

girzel4• 7 years ago

I knew I'd fallen down the rabbit hole when my dad and I started going in on 50lb sacks of wheat berries from Eastern Washington (I'm in Seattle). I can't remember, I think it's like 20 or 30 dollars a sack. I have a mill attachment for a KitchenAid, it's not awesome but it does the trick. My dad bakes 100% ground berries (so completely whole-wheat, by definition), but I mix it with bread flour -- using whole wheat to feed the sourdough starter.

It produces an absolutely incredible flavor. If you give it a slow proof and bake in a cast iron dutch oven, you get these amazing cinnamon and nut smells as it bakes. Just the most delicious bread.

girzel4• 7 years ago

As I understand it, the principle shenanigans going on with commercial flour is that they add enzymes (if you're doing this at home, it will be malt) to the flour before you take it home. Unless I'm quite mistaken -- please tell me if I am -- the whole point of a slow/retarded proof is to give the enzymes a chance to break the starch down into component sugars. When more sugars are broken out, you get both a nicer taste (it's sweet!) and a more beautiful crust (the sugars caramelize/brown).

But with home-milled flour, are there no enzymes at all? What happens to the slow-proofed dough?

xyzzyz• 7 years ago

I bake my own bread precisely so that it’s not sweet, like the store-bought cake bread.

chris_st• 7 years ago

Do you do anything to increase the gluten? When I've tried whole-wheat bread, it just kind of falls apart when sliced. I've tried adding "Vital Wheat Gluten", but even a tablespoon to a loaf didn't seem to help. Thanks!

madhadron• 7 years ago

Try soaking your flour overnight to hydrate the bran, which otherwise can slice up the gluten network. Also, if you're kneading and the surface splits, stop let it sit for five to ten minutes so the gluten can relink before you continue.

girzel4• 7 years ago

I think home-ground whole-wheat flour has to have more gluten than pretty much any other flour out there...

Are you putting a whole bunch of other stuff in there? There's a reason fat is called "shortening" -- it breaks the gluten strands, and makes the bread crumbly. Unless you're putting a whole bunch of butter or some other fat into the flour, I can't imagine why it would be crumbly.

What are your ingredients?

ip265• 7 years ago

Sounds like your hydration was too low or you didn't develop the gluten with enough rest & kneading.

MegaDeKay7• 7 years ago

Search SeriousEats for Bravetart's (aka Stella Parks) 100% whole wheat bread. It uses a food processor to knead the bread in around 75seconds. No VWG. Taste is phenomenal.

droithomme• 7 years ago

Just make this 3x a week.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

Once you get it down, you can make it more fancy by adding other things.

Yeah, store bought breads are terrible with all the weird crap.

Fantastic, delicious, nutritious, satisfying, world-class bread is incredibly simple and easy to make. If your book's recipe is complex and hard to follow, throw it out. They are a poser.

Good bread doesn't last long though and has no shelf duration. But it doesn't have to because it will all be eaten quickly. Store bread is entirely about long term storage of something never intended to be stored more than a day. Given those constraints it is what it is.

smcameron• 7 years ago

I've tried this a few times. Twice, it come out great, and once it failed (I think temp was too cold and it didn't rise quite enough.)

All three times, I made a huge mess. The dry flour goes everywhere, the dough is very sticky and gets on my hands and spoon and the towel and plastic wrap the recipe has you using. If I could figure out how to not make a huge mess, it would be 100x more convenient to make.

stevekemp• 7 years ago

I use an overnight no-knead inspired approach as documented here:

https://blog.steve.fi/this_is_mostly_how_i_make_bread.html

There's only one bowl to clean afterward, and so I find it pretty simple. The pictures in that post don't really do it justice, but I've never had an inedible result, even if sometimes it doesn't look great.

MegaDeKay7• 7 years ago

This is the process I use in making no knead bread. Lots of pictures and minimal minimal mess.

http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.com/2014/06/diablo-bread-br...

But note that no-knead bread is supposed to be sticky. The high hydration is the trick to making the whole thing work, but good technique can reduce the mess to a minimum.

If you are getting inconsistent results, I strongly recommend you weigh your ingredients (especially flour) if you aren't already. There is a huge variation in how much flour is in a cup, and you can swing between delicious to disaster pretty easily. I feel that weighing of ingredients when baking is a key to consistency.

mikro2nd2• 7 years ago

I also use a no-knead technique -- even simpler than the one described in that NYT article -- and it's our staple 'basic bread' in the house. The interesting thing I've found is that the shelf-life is generally better than any store-bought bread I've ever had, which is weird and inexplicable to me, since I'm pretty sure those factory-made breads are stuffed with preservatives.

senectus1• 7 years ago

Its all about the flour.

I'm Australian I recently went through south America for work and was shocked at the poor quality bread products in that country. It turns out their bread has a really poor gluten quality, makes a huge diff to the mouth feel and eat-ability of the bread.

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

Sometimes the health food stores in town have whole wheat flat bread with just whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, water. I can imagine my distant ancestors eating it and feeling right at home with it.

I am supposed to watch the glycemic index of food I eat so eating a small amount of dense whole wheat flat bread works for me. I also sometimes make pizza crust from riced fresh cauliflower and avoid the wheat altogether.

I really like the advice given in the article about only eating what our great grandmothers would recognize as food.

p1mrx• 7 years ago

I wouldn't mind having good bread from time to time, but a loaf is well over 1000 calories, and it goes stale before I have time to eat that much. Frozen bread is difficult to cut, and even pre-sliced frozen bread is a pain to tear apart.

Somebody should make good bread that's pre-sliced into several chunks, with sheets of (e.g.) wax paper dividing them. Each loaf could also include a small resealable bag, so you always have a convenient container for the current non-frozen chunk.

simonebrunozzi• 7 years ago

Book suggestions are great, but I have a more compelling question for all of you: where to get absolutely amazing flour (in the US)?

Baking a Better Loaf of Bread

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