7 ms·

We've started making bread every night for the next day, and I've heard many of my friends are doing this. It's better than what we get in the local bakeries (w

We've started making bread every night for the next day, and I've heard many of my friends are doing this. It's better than what we get in the local bakeries (we don't live in France) and have already discussed continuing to bake now that we figured out some easy tricks. We started here : https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html

Loughla 7y ago
Good Christ, how much bread do you eat? We make like one loaf a week.
- senectus1 7y ago
  probably just small loaves. so they always have nice fresh bread...
chrisseaton 7y ago
Do you eat an entire loaf a day? I like making bread sometimes but my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale.
- Abekkus 7y ago
  Freeze it, then toast it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dllthomas 7y ago
  > before it goes stale Not a problem! Time for bread pudding or a strata.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    There's a limit on how much carbohydrates we can reasonably consume.
    - beckingz 7y ago
      This is why I'm a transhumanist.
    - dllthomas 7y ago
      That's quitter talk.
      - dllthomas 7y ago
        More seriously, a loaf every day does seem a bit much unless you have a large family, are making small loaves, or have a strange diet. I was just speaking to the bit I quoted. If you're making a loaf a week and can keep it dry, you can do use the stale leftovers whenever you've accumulated enough of them.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Before that even, you can make toast and / or french toast with it. And with the leftovers, dry it out in the oven and cube it to make croutons for in soup and salads. My girlfriend puts a collection of herbs and spices on them too, dunno what though. She does put the bag in the freezer then, but since it's dry it doesn't really need to be defrosted.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    I’ll also break it into pieces, let it dry and dip in soups or make French onion soup out of it.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  I've baked bread for my family (2+3) for years, but our consumption is very bursty. Particularly if we haven't had bread for a few days, we can eat a loaf in a day, but then we'll be sick of it and there will be a lull. I invested in a nice set of aluminum Nordic Ware pans a while back, so I do five loaves at once, and probably bake ~1.5–2 times per month. Toast for breakfast can easily knock out half a loaf, and it's way more economical for everyone to have a slice or two of homemade bread than to eat dried cereal and polish off a box a day. With working from home, I've been keeping my sourdough alive on the counter (rather than storing it in the fridge), and although I haven't baked any _loaves_, I've done a lot of other bready things with it over the last few weeks— pizza crusts twice, cinnamon rolls once, lunch buns twice, a focaccia one day. It's been great!
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  > ...my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale. You're obviously not making enough french toast.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  We used to (family of five) go through a loaf a day; we'd buy it in bulk in the weekend and freeze it. Mind you my dad would take like six or eight sandwiches to work every day (metalworker). And we're a sandwich-heavy culture.
- wrycoder 7y ago
  Slice it before it gets too hard, then fry in olive oil or make French toast.
IvyMike 7y ago
Conversely, just saw this twitter post by @gloomfather: "Oh dude yeah you gotta try baking your own bread in quarantine. It takes 14 hours to do right and it’s boring as shit, but the results are often quite disappointing." :)
- jdc 7y ago
  A very on-brand comment from that fellow. But if you not doing it to pass the time, I'd suggest using a bread machine!
  - wtvanhest 7y ago
    Making bread with extremely limited time commitment involves 6 steps that each are very quick, but have to be spaced out correctly. 1. Use a mixer to mix flour (measured by weight), salt, yeast, water for 10 minutes. 2. Let sit for 4 hours 3. Kneed for 5 minutes 4. Rest for 30 minutes in a cold Dutch oven while you preheat to 425 5. Put it in the oven for 30 minutes 6. Remove lid and Lower temp to 375 and weight about 20 more minutes until bread gets to 200 degrees. You do that. It’s 15 minutes worth of work, but you have to be home which makes it optimal for wfh days. You will get awesome results every time
    - netule 7y ago
      I use a similar technique, but I throw it on a pizza stone for 45 minutes in total with a cup of water evaporating from a heated oven tray underneath the stone to provide steam. Making bread yourself is incredibly delicious, easy to do, and takes no time at all. Edit: I also set my oven to 510 Fahrenheit to get a consistent bake, but that may be a quirk of my particular oven.
      - wtvanhest 7y ago
        By using a Dutch oven you get a more consistent temp since it holds the heat like a stone, and doesn’t let moisture evaporate until you take the lid off. So yeah, the variations make sense
mikedilger 7y ago
Go sourdough. Avoid the need to purchase yeast. It's really no more difficult, just a slower rise. Also you don't need to knead, just stretch and fold six or seven times as it bulk ferments. In times like these I'd highly recommend getting starter from someone who already has some. Starting your own won't always yield a high-powered reliable one. I've started many over the years, but never realized that all of them were weak until I got some starter from a cafe in town. I cannot recommend enough using an established proven starter.
- jgraham 7y ago
  You also don't need to stretch and fold, you can just knead (or not even do that if you have enough gluten development from the autolyse). I point this out because I'm pretty sure that different techniques will suit some people better than others. Personally I'm happy to do 10 minutes of kneading at the start, but find it burdeonsome to go back and do stretch-and-fold every half an hour (or whatever schedule you're following). Similarly I've seen people claim that the only correct way to keep a sourdough starter is to feed it small amounts of flour and water multiple times a day. If I had to do that I'd never remember and so never bake bread again; the results from keeping the starter in the fridge and refreshing it 12-24 hours before baking are good enough for me, and it's a schedule I can stick to. Sourdough seems to be one of those activities where there are a lot of people who have a way that works for them and generalise out to that being the one correct way to do things. Whilst there are definitely things that work better and things that don't work so well, the important thing is to find a method that you're able to reliably follow and that gives results you're happy with.
- telesilla 7y ago
  >from someone who already has some Not really possible right now =)
commandlinefan 7y ago
Where are you finding flour? The stores around here have been sold out for weeks now.
- prawn 7y ago
  Same here. I tried one of the mills, but they had closed their online store due to increased demand. We ended up getting some from a baking school that had been forced to close.
- jpindar 7y ago
  I just got some from Walmart, which took exactly a week to arrive. Not bad under the circumstances. If what you're looking for is out of stock, just keep checking it, they seem to be restocking quickly enough.
munchbunny 7y ago
The great thing about making your own bread is that as long as you have salt, yeast, flour, water, and an oven, you can fit your bread recipe to the equipment that you have. Getting a great loaf at home takes some practice (my first loaf came out like a biscuit, it was horrible). But after a few repetitions you can get pretty consistently good results. I'm not as much of a sourdough person, and I don't have a dough machine or stand mixer, but I have a hand-kneaded recipe that I like. I don't have a dutch oven, so I use a stockpot instead. And so on. There's tons of info online, and it gets easy and more consistent with practice.
tmountain 7y ago
I've been doing a no knead recipe that takes ~3 hours, and it comes out great. If you're making bread every day, it might save you some time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0t8ZAhb8lQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0t8ZAhb8lQ
stevekemp 7y ago
I've been baking bread every weekend, or two, for over a year now. Currently in Helsinki my local shops have run out of flour, and dried yeast, but I'm still good for now, as I have a surplus of flour and I started making my own sourdough starter. Sourdough starters are pretty easy to create, but I usually make one then go back to dried yeast after a few months. I suspect the batch I'm using at the moment will last longer than most: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-R-kkphHPP/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B-R-kkphHPP/

Loughla 7y ago

Good Christ, how much bread do you eat? We make like one loaf a week.

senectus1 7y ago
probably just small loaves. so they always have nice fresh bread...

chrisseaton 7y ago

Do you eat an entire loaf a day? I like making bread sometimes but my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale.

Abekkus 7y ago
Freeze it, then toast it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dllthomas 7y ago
> before it goes stale Not a problem! Time for bread pudding or a strata.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  There's a limit on how much carbohydrates we can reasonably consume.
  - beckingz 7y ago
    This is why I'm a transhumanist.
  - dllthomas 7y ago
    That's quitter talk.
    - dllthomas 7y ago
      More seriously, a loaf every day does seem a bit much unless you have a large family, are making small loaves, or have a strange diet. I was just speaking to the bit I quoted. If you're making a loaf a week and can keep it dry, you can do use the stale leftovers whenever you've accumulated enough of them.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Before that even, you can make toast and / or french toast with it. And with the leftovers, dry it out in the oven and cube it to make croutons for in soup and salads. My girlfriend puts a collection of herbs and spices on them too, dunno what though. She does put the bag in the freezer then, but since it's dry it doesn't really need to be defrosted.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  I’ll also break it into pieces, let it dry and dip in soups or make French onion soup out of it.
mikepurvis 7y ago
I've baked bread for my family (2+3) for years, but our consumption is very bursty. Particularly if we haven't had bread for a few days, we can eat a loaf in a day, but then we'll be sick of it and there will be a lull. I invested in a nice set of aluminum Nordic Ware pans a while back, so I do five loaves at once, and probably bake ~1.5–2 times per month. Toast for breakfast can easily knock out half a loaf, and it's way more economical for everyone to have a slice or two of homemade bread than to eat dried cereal and polish off a box a day. With working from home, I've been keeping my sourdough alive on the counter (rather than storing it in the fridge), and although I haven't baked any _loaves_, I've done a lot of other bready things with it over the last few weeks— pizza crusts twice, cinnamon rolls once, lunch buns twice, a focaccia one day. It's been great!
throwaway55554 7y ago
> ...my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale. You're obviously not making enough french toast.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
We used to (family of five) go through a loaf a day; we'd buy it in bulk in the weekend and freeze it. Mind you my dad would take like six or eight sandwiches to work every day (metalworker). And we're a sandwich-heavy culture.
wrycoder 7y ago
Slice it before it gets too hard, then fry in olive oil or make French toast.

IvyMike 7y ago

Conversely, just saw this twitter post by @gloomfather: "Oh dude yeah you gotta try baking your own bread in quarantine. It takes 14 hours to do right and it’s boring as shit, but the results are often quite disappointing." :)

jdc 7y ago
A very on-brand comment from that fellow. But if you not doing it to pass the time, I'd suggest using a bread machine!
- wtvanhest 7y ago
  Making bread with extremely limited time commitment involves 6 steps that each are very quick, but have to be spaced out correctly. 1. Use a mixer to mix flour (measured by weight), salt, yeast, water for 10 minutes. 2. Let sit for 4 hours 3. Kneed for 5 minutes 4. Rest for 30 minutes in a cold Dutch oven while you preheat to 425 5. Put it in the oven for 30 minutes 6. Remove lid and Lower temp to 375 and weight about 20 more minutes until bread gets to 200 degrees. You do that. It’s 15 minutes worth of work, but you have to be home which makes it optimal for wfh days. You will get awesome results every time
  - netule 7y ago
    I use a similar technique, but I throw it on a pizza stone for 45 minutes in total with a cup of water evaporating from a heated oven tray underneath the stone to provide steam. Making bread yourself is incredibly delicious, easy to do, and takes no time at all. Edit: I also set my oven to 510 Fahrenheit to get a consistent bake, but that may be a quirk of my particular oven.
    - wtvanhest 7y ago
      By using a Dutch oven you get a more consistent temp since it holds the heat like a stone, and doesn’t let moisture evaporate until you take the lid off. So yeah, the variations make sense

mikedilger 7y ago

Go sourdough. Avoid the need to purchase yeast. It's really no more difficult, just a slower rise. Also you don't need to knead, just stretch and fold six or seven times as it bulk ferments. In times like these I'd highly recommend getting starter from someone who already has some. Starting your own won't always yield a high-powered reliable one. I've started many over the years, but never realized that all of them were weak until I got some starter from a cafe in town. I cannot recommend enough using an established proven starter.

jgraham 7y ago
You also don't need to stretch and fold, you can just knead (or not even do that if you have enough gluten development from the autolyse). I point this out because I'm pretty sure that different techniques will suit some people better than others. Personally I'm happy to do 10 minutes of kneading at the start, but find it burdeonsome to go back and do stretch-and-fold every half an hour (or whatever schedule you're following). Similarly I've seen people claim that the only correct way to keep a sourdough starter is to feed it small amounts of flour and water multiple times a day. If I had to do that I'd never remember and so never bake bread again; the results from keeping the starter in the fridge and refreshing it 12-24 hours before baking are good enough for me, and it's a schedule I can stick to. Sourdough seems to be one of those activities where there are a lot of people who have a way that works for them and generalise out to that being the one correct way to do things. Whilst there are definitely things that work better and things that don't work so well, the important thing is to find a method that you're able to reliably follow and that gives results you're happy with.
telesilla 7y ago
>from someone who already has some Not really possible right now =)

commandlinefan 7y ago

Where are you finding flour? The stores around here have been sold out for weeks now.

prawn 7y ago
Same here. I tried one of the mills, but they had closed their online store due to increased demand. We ended up getting some from a baking school that had been forced to close.
jpindar 7y ago
I just got some from Walmart, which took exactly a week to arrive. Not bad under the circumstances. If what you're looking for is out of stock, just keep checking it, they seem to be restocking quickly enough.

munchbunny 7y ago

The great thing about making your own bread is that as long as you have salt, yeast, flour, water, and an oven, you can fit your bread recipe to the equipment that you have. Getting a great loaf at home takes some practice (my first loaf came out like a biscuit, it was horrible). But after a few repetitions you can get pretty consistently good results. I'm not as much of a sourdough person, and I don't have a dough machine or stand mixer, but I have a hand-kneaded recipe that I like. I don't have a dutch oven, so I use a stockpot instead. And so on. There's tons of info online, and it gets easy and more consistent with practice.

tmountain 7y ago

I've been doing a no knead recipe that takes ~3 hours, and it comes out great. If you're making bread every day, it might save you some time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0t8ZAhb8lQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0t8ZAhb8lQ

stevekemp 7y ago

I've been baking bread every weekend, or two, for over a year now. Currently in Helsinki my local shops have run out of flour, and dried yeast, but I'm still good for now, as I have a surplus of flour and I started making my own sourdough starter. Sourdough starters are pretty easy to create, but I usually make one then go back to dried yeast after a few months. I suspect the batch I'm using at the moment will last longer than most: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-R-kkphHPP/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B-R-kkphHPP/