h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now I'm very confused. I used the same flour yesterday to make a bloomer loaf, with pretty much the same recipe as I use for the tin loaves, and it came out great. Not even a wrinkled crust like I often get

Next time I'm going to adapt your baguette recipe to make something similar, which I suppose will technically be a batard or a boule, depending on what shape I make it.

I've used the baguette recipie before, for making rahter nice crusty rolls, it oughta work well for soemthing larger... like a

One thing I've found with bloomers, at least with this recipe, is that the dough spreads on second rise after shaping, and although it gets a good oven spring I get a much flatter loaf than a bloomer ought to be. So this time I've put a couple of bottles, sort of wine bottle size, underneath the silicon paper so that it's in a sort of U-shape. When the dough rises it'll almost be like the sides of a loaf tin and hopefully it'll make the dough go up rather than out. I'll remove the bottles before it goes in the oven, of course

I've never* had any luck with 'free form' loafs, like bloomers... I had an attempt, a while ago, at doing tiger bread, which was a basic white bloomer, just with sessamae oil in it, and then with the 'Tiger loaf topping' made up and 'painted' on top by the time it'd par risen, it was getting very* flat... by the time it came out of the oven, it was well, basically rather remanisant of a cow-pat type structure (tasted good, but only really of any use to tear off chunks to dip in soups/stews)

Hmm.... do you have to aim for a better early on glutin development (lots more needing?), so its got more physical strength to retain its shape, without the supporting 'help' of the sides of a tin? For things like bread rolls, they seem to hold their shape wll; but its less 'bulk' or 'mass' of dough, but with anything aiming towards a bloomer size, you've got more dough, and so, probably need more glutin development, to start with, to be able to support the extra err mass of dough

Closest I came to getting a decent bloomer style loaf, was rising it in a very well oiled, oversized (for the amoutn of dough), tin, and sort of eezing it out of that, and on to a baking tray, a little while before cooking.... I guess the bottles either side (or a bread tin either side), to support it, then removed before cooking, might work basically the same

Pah. anyhow. who wants nice, even, perfectly shaped and sized bread?! If we wanted that, we'd go to the Spar shop and buy some Sunblessed, or hovis!

yeh... no one is gona confuse my bread for having been made commercially... I don't pay too* much attention to sizing or shaping carefully or uniformly (though I do, to some extent with the baguettes, but they useually end up, not being an even 'thickness' along their length, but I do split, and weigh the dough, so each baguette is vaguely* the same weight of dough)

I want nice, even, perfectly shaped and sized bread! Well, mostly. I don't mind if it isn't perfect to the nearest angstrom, of course, but it should at least look loaf-shaped

I thought for a while that to get a good high free-form loaf the dough should be stiff (less water), but apparently that means you don't get much oven spring and a slack dough is better, but neither seem to work for me so perhaps gluten development is the key.

Either way, it looks my idea is working The dough is going longways and upways, but not sideways

Yeh... I think its probably* more down to glutin development...

Oh, and yes... I always want my baguettes to look like baguettes, but if they're a bit thicker at one end than the other, I don't over-work them to try even it out, to the sort of closeness of consistancy in shape, a bought one would be; Loafs in the tins, I find easier to get pretty damn consistant size/shape/height etc., all over their length and I'm not so bad with rolls, and their shaping, though an entire batch of rolls, won't exactly all be the same shape, and my pitta bread... well, its just the shape it is!

It came out pretty good Still not quite as poofed up as the bloomers I used to buy from that bakery in Hoxton (before Hoxton was bloody hipsterville) that isn't there any more, but better than before

...I want nice, even, perfectly shaped and sized bread!....Dare not ask what you expect of your gingerbread men..

I wanna make gingerbread men!; sadly, my explorations of shops, in town, to find a gingerbread men cutter, didn't produce any I was happy with; Wrong size (too small), and oddly shaped to my mind...

I thought maybe it might have been me after all because I made a loaf last weekend that turned out to be one of the best I've ever made - good rise, good oven spring and a beautifully crisp crust. So I bought some more of the dubious flour.

Nope, it's the flour. I think the good loaf must have been made from older flour from the other shop that was at the bottom of my flour tin because the two I've made since then, including one that's cooling right now, with the new flour are housebricks, and they both did that same thing with bubbles on the top of the loaf that I had to burst before putting it in the oven. I never had that problem with the older flour, or any other flour I can think of in all the time (25 years, on and off) I've been making bread.

That's a real pity because the new flour is organic and the old isn't. Oh well.

I picked up a load of the old flour at the supermarket yesterday so I'm making floury baps with some of what's left with the new stuff, just to see what happens. A cold front is coming through today so I might make a cake of some kind with more of it, then mix the rest in with my plain flour.

It won't be a fruit cake though. I only go to the supermarket every couple of weeks now, so I made a list of all the things I needed to buy there that I can't get at the co-op, or that are cheaper at the supermarket than at the co-op (because I'm on a tight budget right now). Leastways I thought I did. Not on the list:

Turmeric (not in bulk at the co-op)
Vegetable oil (cheaper at the supermarket)
Organic ketchup (I haven't looked for that at the co-op yet)

And...

Sultanas.

I know for sure they don't have those in bulk at the co-op like the supermarket does, and I was perusing the baking aisle at the co-op last week and saw no dried fruit of any kind - currants, raisins or sultanas. I can't believe they wouldn't stock those so maybe they're somewhere else. I used up all my sultanas last week on a slab cake so I have none at all (which by a strange coincidence is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendent etc etc).

So it might be a chocolate sponge cake. I bought some good quality chocolate (55% solids) a few months ago when it was on sale, and I've got some Dutch-processed cocoa powder in the cupboard, which Alton says is good for baking... although I can't remember why now.

I also forgot to mention that I forgot to buy the extra sugar I need to make marmalade with the 3lbs of Valencia oranges I bought yesterday, and a tin of cherries to make these http://bunscuffle.co.uk/2013/02/chocolate-cherry-brownies-recipe/

Y'know, I'm beginning to wonder if it's the yeast, not the flour. Even with the flour from the supermarket, which I've never had a problem with before, I'm getting crappy loaves, like the one I made yesterday - a good first rise, a halfway decent second rise in the tin, no oven spring, a few bubbles on top of the loaf, and a disappointingly soft and unevenly cooked crust with wrinkles when it cools.

And yet there was that one loaf two or three weeks ago, made with this yeast from this jar, which was one of the best I've ever made - great rise, good oven spring and a fantastic crust that stayed crispy even after the loaf had cooled down. And I have no idea what I did to make it so because I didn't do anything I don't always do

I've noticed though that when I mould the dough ready for the second rise I'm not getting a good tight skin on in, which I understand can be a cause of a wrinkled crust. I'm going to open that new jar of yeast for the next loaf and see what happens. There's not much left in the old one anyway.