Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
The worst part about bread making in particular is the effort and time involved and having it come out like a brick, and then doing it all over again making minute variations in water, sugar, flour, yeast or rise times and then not getting any improvement.
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If you are continually ending up with bread that is like a "brick", you are either using too much flour or not proofing the bread properly.
When making bread, I think the following tip is just about the most important thing to keep in mind.
Less flour is usually better than more flour.
When I use a new recipe for bread, I always start with at least one cup less flour than what is called for. That is partly due of course to the very dry climate we have in the Calgary area. But it is also just good common sense.....just the same as less salt is usually better than more salt.
You can always add more flour if needed, a little bit at a time, but you can not take flour out. If your dough is too dense and stiff, your only recourse at that time is to add more liquid.....and let me tell you from experience.....it is MUCH easier to add more flour to bread dough than it is to add more liquid to bread dough.
Another thing you can try that is very easy is to use the autolyse method. Many don't add salt until after the autolyse but for you, I doubt you would notice a noticeable difference.
So make up your dough, purposely leaving it too tacky to handle, in other words with less flour than what was called for. Cover the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes. Now try handling the dough again. You should notice that the dough is easier to handle and not as tacky as before. It should have developed more gluten by now and gluten is what binds your strands of dough together.
If you can now handle the dough without it sticking all over your work surface or your hands, just knead it and continue your recipe from this point on. If the dough is still too tacky, then of course you can slowly add more flour.
For breads that you will be baking in pans, in other words, in an environment that contains their shape, you can get away with dough that is quite tacky.
For breads that you will be baking free form, in other words where the bread is not confined and can spread sideways, then you can not get away with dough that is too tacky. The bread will still turn out ok but it will be more pancaked shaped with not as much heighth and of course, then you have more crust as well.