Weird results with a bread recipe

jtbo

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Bread, that magical thing, which is so nice when you get it right and while it bloats it does so good.

I have made my variation of this King Arthur's recipe, mostly because there is no semolina here, only semolina is white stuff for breakfast use and that is not correct type, durum flour is closest thing we have and even that I have to get from city which is 2 hour ride:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/italian-hearth-bread-recipe

Medium grind wheat flour 298g
Durum wheat flour 41g
whole wheat flour 20,5g
yeast bread flour (I don't know English name) 20,5g
Water 255g
Olive oil 25g
Sugar 5g
Salt 6,25g
Yeast (dry)5,66g

First, add water and sugar in mixer bowl, warm it to 37-38C (I know they say for dry yeast it should be 42C, it is not true, staying below 40C gives me 100% success in rising bread, while 42C randomly fails the yeast), add yeast and 30g of flour, mix with medium until little foam appears, then let it sit for few minutes as that is starter.

After it is foamy thick stuff, add rest of flour, salt and olive oil, mix in mixer for 2 minutes at low speed.

Let it rest 15 minutes.

Mix 7 minutes at low speed, after that put bowl to warm spot, cover with plastic, let it rise for 1 hour.

After 1 hour make it bread shaped, put to oven pan, sprinkle flour on top of it and rub very gently some flour on top of bread, then put baking sheet on top and plastic on top of that, let it rise for 1 hour at non draft bit warmer than room temp location.

Baking at bottom most position in the oven that is warmed to 200C, 15-20 minutes, dark brown means it was too long, it should be quite light.

It came out wonderfully, perfect bread, perfect resistance, perfect taste.


That was 1/2 batch size, next I decided to make full amount, so doubled everything.

Medium grind wheat flour 596g
Durum wheat flour 82g
whole wheat flour 41g
yeast bread flour (I don't know English name) 41g
Water 510g
Olive oil 50g
Sugar 10g
Salt 12g
Yeast (dry) 11g

Dough was way too loose, I ended up adding almost 100g of flour and dough still was quite loose, very sticky, but somewhat manageable, taste was good, texture was good, only thing was that it was too loose as bread did rise, but more of sideways.

I'm bit puzzled about how increasing size ended up dough being so much different, I weight everything carefully, clock times and check that temperatures of my cooking are to match, trying to eliminate all the variables which has improved results incredibly, but now all of sudden I get dough that is way too loose and I should have same proportions, same temperatures, same timing and it was less than 24 hours apart from 1st to 2nd attempt.

Anyone has experienced such things before?

Oh, bread works really well with tuna, it has quite bit stronger taste than one baked just from all purpose wheat flour.

Also I have done same recipe with less yeast in such way that at evening I have prepared the dough and put it to cold, let it rise for more than 8 hours, not much difference to taste, but it was too fluffy from inside, no resistance at all, also for some odd reason crust became very hard which was unexplainable also.

I start to doubt my scale, could it lie randomly like bathroom scale does, especially after that extra bit of bread? :lol3:
 

catapault

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Hi JTbo,

I think what you are calling "yeast bread flour" is simply called just "bread flour" here in the USA. It is flour high in gluten. Gluten, developed in the kneading process, makes those strands that hold the air bubbles made by yeast.

After the first rise are you shaping the dough into 2 loaves of bread or just one rather large loaf? Try dividing it and see if that makes any difference.

Did you e-mail King Arthur flour company and ask them?
 

MoochNNoodles

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I have had the same issue when I try to double my yeast rolls recipe.  I ended up just basically making them twice but at once.  Dividing it for rising sounds like a good idea to try.  I might do that the next time I make rolls.
 
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jtbo

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Hi JTbo,

I think what you are calling "yeast bread flour" is simply called just "bread flour" here in the USA. It is flour high in gluten. Gluten, developed in the kneading process, makes those strands that hold the air bubbles made by yeast.

After the first rise are you shaping the dough into 2 loaves of bread or just one rather large loaf? Try dividing it and see if that makes any difference.

Did you e-mail King Arthur flour company and ask them?
Wheat has shell, core and part in between, yeast bread flour is wheat ground from part in between core and shell from near the shell, if that makes any sense. It is also called dark wheat flour, if that is what bread flour in US is, then it should be correct term.

You can try translator on this, but not sure if results are much better for figuring out what odd stuff this is:
https://www.myllynparas.fi/tuotteet/hiivaleipavehnajauho-2-kg

Would be nice if King Arthur would open branch office to Europe so one could get proper flour with correct names instead of these only national variants, attempts at world culinary are bit challenged sometimes with only national raw materials :)

Anyway, after first rise when I made 1/2 batch, I actually made 3 loaf's, or one might call then baguette, they are not layered though, just long pieces of dough, I do that as my oven is not so great and have to keep everything small, however that 1/2 batch should produce 1 loaf.

Problem with dough being too soft/wet did manifest itself before 1st rise though and only difference was size of batch, so maybe sometimes it just happens as seems to be what has happened to @MoochNNoodles?

Doing it twice sounds bit of more work, but maybe that is the solution then. Curious mind just would like to find out why such happens, there should be some logical explanation to everything, yet there is none.

I will get hydrometer soon, so that might be one thing to compare, if air was more moist at 2nd time than what it was 1st time, after all, summer and winter recipes differ a bit because of moisture difference in air.
 

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JTbo, I'm a big King Arthur fan and I make this bread regularly. It's a good bread. I've not doubled this recipe, so I'm not sure what's going on with your efforts. I shape baguettes more than loaves, too, simply because we like baguettes more. 
 And I like not having to use loaf pans, if I don't have to.

Did you knead it long enough since you doubled the recipe?

I use instant yeast in all my baking now; that means, that I can just throw everything to my bowl at the same time (and that's what I do with this recipe). I buy a pound at the beginning of every year and store it in the fridge. 

You can substitute regular all-purpose flour for semolina with little effect, esp in bread (I don't know that I'd do it for pasta though).

As Catapault said, bread flour here is a very high gluten flour, made with wheat grown in the northern United States. 

Different days (humidity, if it's raining) can sometimes mean that you need to add a bit more flour to the mix, especially during kneading. It may sound silly, but there are times when I will need to increase my flour during kneading by as much as a full cup! (You have me a bit confused with using grams.....sorry 
  I do measure my ingredients on a nutritional scale, but to just figure it out off the top of my head, well, I can't.)

By all means, email King Arthur....they will get back to you. 

And if you don't mind not doubling the recipe, well then just make a couple recipes one after the other instead. Sometimes a recipe will not work out OK if you double it; I don't know why..
 
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jtbo

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JTbo, I'm a big King Arthur fan and I make this bread regularly. It's a good bread. I've not doubled this recipe, so I'm not sure what's going on with your efforts. I shape baguettes more than loaves, too, simply because we like baguettes more. :)  And I like not having to use loaf pans, if I don't have to.

Did you knead it long enough since you doubled the recipe?

I use instant yeast in all my baking now; that means, that I can just throw everything to my bowl at the same time (and that's what I do with this recipe). I buy a pound at the beginning of every year and store it in the fridge. 

You can substitute regular all-purpose flour for semolina with little effect, esp in bread (I don't know that I'd do it for pasta though).

As Catapault said, bread flour here is a very high gluten flour, made with wheat grown in the northern United States. 

Different days (humidity, if it's raining) can sometimes mean that you need to add a bit more flour to the mix, especially during kneading. It may sound silly, but there are times when I will need to increase my flour during kneading by as much as a full cup! (You have me a bit confused with using grams.....sorry :lol3:   I do measure my ingredients on a nutritional scale, but to just figure it out off the top of my head, well, I can't.)

By all means, email King Arthur....they will get back to you. 

And if you don't mind not doubling the recipe, well then just make a couple recipes one after the other instead. Sometimes a recipe will not work out OK if you double it; I don't know why..
I did knead about double the time, which is when I did decide to add more flour. I guess that it should be noted, I do all the kneading with machine, which seems to give me much more consistent results. After rise in a bowl and when shaping, I do turn dough once or twice to remove excess gas, but I have gone to almost no manual labor with my bread making.

According to this it seems that amount I needed to add was somewhat inline with your experiences about the weather:
http://dish.allrecipes.com/cup-to-gram-conversions/

We have semi-rough grind wheat flour that is like all-purpose flour here, but using durum flour together with whole wheat and dark wheat flour to replace semolina makes bread to resist bite bit more and adds a lot of flavor in too, without sacrificing softness. I use same dough for thin crust pizza too, works wonderfully :)

I could of course get a bread machine, but it is bit of limited, maybe some day I build my own bit different bread machine when I have perfected the process :lol3:

It seems quite likely that humidity of air has something to do with this issue when I doubled the size of dough and it needed close to 1 cup extra flour.

I guess one improvement would be to premix the flour, so that when I need to add more, proportions between different flour types stay the same, that would again improve repeatability. so that I would get same kind of bread each time.
 

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I don't think you need a bread machine; it seems to me that you're doing well with what you have now. (I don't really care for bread machines, but that's just me).

I didn't realize that you were machine-kneading.

I'm really thinking humidity. There are times, esp on a drier day when a recipe might call for five cups of flour and, for the life of me, I can't get more than 3-1/2 cups of flour into that recipe. My recipe for Garlic-Parm rolls is like that; the recipe calls for three cups of bread flour and three cups of all-purpose flour. I can't get more than four cups of flour total in that recipe, no matter how much I try. It has to me; I have to be doing something wrong. But the dough always rises fine and the rolls taste fine. But I've never gotten more than four cups of flour into the recipe, even adding in the flour that I use to knead. It's really weird.

And then, like I said, I've had to add as much as an extra cup of flour to other bread recipes at times.

As long as you're comfortable with making one recipe after the other and not doubling the recipe, I think you're fine.
 

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Hi JTbo,

In Sweden high gluten content flour is called 'Vetemjöl Special' or 'Starkt Vetemjöl'. Wholegrain flour is 'Fullkornsmjöl'.

An expat in Finland wrote that she had not "found anything resembling high-gluten bread flour here in Finland is because it’s too darn cold for the gluten to develop in the wheat crops here." Don't know if that is accurate.

I bake a very simple recipe with King Arthur bread flour, water, very little instant rise yeast, and salt. It is a very slack, no knead dough that takes an 18 hour rise before baking in a pre-heated enameled cast iron pot with a lid. It makes a superb "country" loaf with great oven spring, good crust, excellent crumb and superb flavor. I also created a rye bread variation. But it could not be used for baguettes because it is such a soft dough. Let me know if you want the recipe.
 

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P.S.

Hard white flour is milled from a spring or winter wheat that is higher in protein than that used for soft wheat flour. It is used by professional bread bakers because its strong gluten structure helps produce a lighter, more porous texture. Hard wheat flour is more granular or gritty than soft white flour, and it usually absorbs more liquid. 

High gluten flour is a hard wheat flour milled from a very high protein spring wheat. It's used primarily for French and other crusty breads. 
 
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jtbo

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I don't think you need a bread machine; it seems to me that you're doing well with what you have now. (I don't really care for bread machines, but that's just me).

I didn't realize that you were machine-kneading.

I'm really thinking humidity. There are times, esp on a drier day when a recipe might call for five cups of flour and, for the life of me, I can't get more than 3-1/2 cups of flour into that recipe. My recipe for Garlic-Parm rolls is like that; the recipe calls for three cups of bread flour and three cups of all-purpose flour. I can't get more than four cups of flour total in that recipe, no matter how much I try. It has to me; I have to be doing something wrong. But the dough always rises fine and the rolls taste fine. But I've never gotten more than four cups of flour into the recipe, even adding in the flour that I use to knead. It's really weird.

And then, like I said, I've had to add as much as an extra cup of flour to other bread recipes at times.

As long as you're comfortable with making one recipe after the other and not doubling the recipe, I think you're fine.
Maybe I just need to rewrite recipe for bigger amount, it should not be too difficult to do really, just need to weight every flour added and then adjust salt etc. to match, but if we are talking about adding lot less than 1/6th of total volume worth of flour, other adjustments might not be needed, again I have to experiment with that.

I like this easy way of making bread, I can have only dry yeast or traditional yeast so I need to make starter to get things easy, after starter I just need to add everything in and mix, that makes a huge time savings, especially when making bigger batch.

My kitchen machine is OBH Nordica Hercules, which has been quite nice after I adjusted kneading hook height, no matter how big the dough, it kneads dough without complaining.


@Catapault, I don't know if our wheat is different in gluten, but I have heard that our rye is somewhat of different, maybe because long days during growth season.

In Swedish, yeast bread flour is Jästbrödsjmöl, at least that is what it says on package. yeast = jäst, bread = bröd, smjöl = flour, only translation to english that I have found is dark wheat flour or mixed grain bread.


I thought it might be interesting to hear what do you think of these:

Medium grind / regular / all-purpose, which has almost none of dark bits in it:

Yeast bread flour, which is a wheat ground from near the shell of the seed, there are more of dark bits in it, anyone seen anything similar, is bread flour looking anything like that?:

Full grain wheat, which has a lot of dark bits in it:

I'm out of Durum, but this is called Pizzaflour, it has durum wheat in it, you can see how it has bit of yellowish tint, durum wheat is even more yellow:

This is rye flour, not sure if rye flour in other parts of the world looks different, but this is how it is in paper bags which I can get:


Then there is Special wheat flour, it is rougher grind than medium grind in 1st pic, but it contains only core of the wheat seed and I believe it has higher gluten content, recommended use is cakes etc. you can try your luck with translator on this page https://www.myllynparas.fi/tuotteet/erikoisvehnajauho-2-kg

At the city there are so many different kind of flour that usually I get confused and run away before I manage to get any :doh3:

Maybe with those pics it is easier for you to find equivalent (and maybe I can figure out better which to use when recipe calls bread flour etc), if you wish to try out that recipe I wrote in first post, sometimes I find it is little things like exactly correct flour that makes a difference, also temperature of flour must be correct or again there is difference at end result, but then again some variation might be even nice, if one just can repeat the variation at will :lol3:
 
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jtbo

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This is what comes out from yeast bread flour, when that is only flour used, quite dark:
 

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Hmmm, I'm not sure if you should use all bread flour or all of the others, for that matter. Usually, it might be half bread flour, half regular flour. Or three cups regular flour and two cups bread flour. Something like that. Same with whole wheat and such. Although I did see on America's Test Kitchen. where they made blueberry muffins using 100% whole wheat flour with no all purpose flour. The muffins looked really good, too.

I've never used 100% any kind of flour, other than, of course, just regular flour. Oh, and White Lily, which is a light southern US flour that is wonderful for biscuits and shortcakes. I use 100% White Lily when making biscuits.

I have whole wheat and then I have a white whole wheat. I use the white whole wheat for making bread when people come to our house and they don't like whole wheat bread. If I use the white whole wheat, the finished bread doesn't look like whole wheat bread and they'll eat it with no problem. I have a devious mind sometimes. 


The rye flour that I use (from King Arthur) is really light for rye. I'd like to get actual pumpernickel flour to make some pumpernickel bread; I haven't made that in a long time.

I'll have to really look at my bread flour; I use King Arthur's bread flour and I don't think it has any dark bits or anything like that in it. 

Your pictures are interesting, JTbo!
 
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kittens mom

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Wheat has shell, core and part in between, yeast bread flour is wheat ground from part in between core and shell from near the shell, if that makes any sense. It is also called dark wheat flour, if that is what bread flour in US is, then it should be correct term.

You can try translator on this, but not sure if results are much better for figuring out what odd stuff this is:
https://www.myllynparas.fi/tuotteet/hiivaleipavehnajauho-2-kg

Would be nice if King Arthur would open branch office to Europe so one could get proper flour with correct names instead of these only national variants, attempts at world culinary are bit challenged sometimes with only national raw materials


Anyway, after first rise when I made 1/2 batch, I actually made 3 loaf's, or one might call then baguette, they are not layered though, just long pieces of dough, I do that as my oven is not so great and have to keep everything small, however that 1/2 batch should produce 1 loaf.

Problem with dough being too soft/wet did manifest itself before 1st rise though and only difference was size of batch, so maybe sometimes it just happens as seems to be what has happened to @MoochNNoodles?

Doing it twice sounds bit of more work, but maybe that is the solution then. Curious mind just would like to find out why such happens, there should be some logical explanation to everything, yet there is none.

I will get hydrometer soon, so that might be one thing to compare, if air was more moist at 2nd time than what it was 1st time, after all, summer and winter recipes differ a bit because of moisture difference in air.
If you can access the King Arthur web site they almost always respond to questions on recipes. Are you using the SAF Instant yeast ? It's almost foolproof in loaves made without a bread machine and artisan breads. did you score the top with a razor blade before baking ? In a baguette you need to let the steam escape. I have also ran into bad jars or cakes of yeast.
 
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jtbo

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Hmmm, I'm not sure if you should use all bread flour or all of the others, for that matter. Usually, it might be half bread flour, half regular flour. Or three cups regular flour and two cups bread flour. Something like that. Same with whole wheat and such. Although I did see on America's Test Kitchen. where they made blueberry muffins using 100% whole wheat flour with no all purpose flour. The muffins looked really good, too.

I've never used 100% any kind of flour, other than, of course, just regular flour. Oh, and White Lily, which is a light southern US flour that is wonderful for biscuits and shortcakes. I use 100% White Lily when making biscuits.

I have whole wheat and then I have a white whole wheat. I use the white whole wheat for making bread when people come to our house and they don't like whole wheat bread. If I use the white whole wheat, the finished bread doesn't look like whole wheat bread and they'll eat it with no problem. I have a devious mind sometimes. :D

The rye flour that I use (from King Arthur) is really light for rye. I'd like to get actual pumpernickel flour to make some pumpernickel bread; I haven't made that in a long time.

I'll have to really look at my bread flour; I use King Arthur's bread flour and I don't think it has any dark bits or anything like that in it. 

Your pictures are interesting, JTbo!
Yeast bread is actually own kind of bread, for that you put only yeast bread flour in it, it has strong flavor, bit like in rye bread, but without the sting of the rye bread. Bad bit is that it won't stay fresh for a long, so to extend life, other kind of wheat flour is needed, also rising yeast bread can be bit of challenging, very soft dough and long rising time helps, but it will never be something like french bread soft, it will have a good resistance to bite though and strong good flavor.

Thin crust pizza from that will be really good, different experience which one might get hooked into ;)

Real rye bread does not have yeast, or wheat, only things it will have are rye flour that contains only 100% rye seeds ground, water and salt, that is traditional rye bread, not very baker friendly though!

I think that I try to add some Psyllium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyllium) for next yeast bread as it improves rising and makes bread be better next day, you just need to put psyllium to water and let it sit until psyllium is kind of bloated, it takes water in.

I have never heard about white whole wheat, is it somehow bleached version or made completely differently?

Cheater's version of rye bread flour bag looks exactly same as yeast bread flour bag, this last time I thought I make rye bread, but noticed then that smell of flour is different, doh, wrong bag, no worries, I did follow wrong recipe too as it was printed on back side of the bag so I did ended up making yeast bread which I had never done before :lol3:

I think 50/50 mix would improve life of bread a lot, while having still lot of flavor.


I don't know what SAF instant yeast is, I use Sunnuntai Dry yeast, but then again that is probably unknown to lot bigger crowd. Proofing temp 42C, I put in cold water, works well that way too, especially as I make dough at evening, let it rise at cool place over night (others would put in fridge) and sometime of next day I take it to warm up and for baking. Only problem with rising these days seems to be paper getting attached to bread, paper is there for keeping loaves from drying up, on top of paper I put plastic bag and that seems to be too heavy.



I did program Arduino to log temperature and humidity to computer, so I can now check if humidity has some correlation to needed amount of added flour to make dough right softness.
I'm keeping on eye of weight sensors too, so I would get more accuracy to scaling and I could log that onto computer too, if there would be correlation with humidity, then I could program correlation factor and program would tell me how much extra flour is needed to be added, so I could put correct amount of flour straight to pot and let machine do the rest.
Actually I think that I could program kitchen aid machine to run proper time at proper speed too, maybe at some point I could even make it add all ingredients to pot too, it would be perfect bread every time then, only thing for me to do would be shaping of loaves and baking.
It would take only few servos and sensors after figuring out what makes need of additional flour at times, yeah and lot of R&D + programming, well, that is my kind of fun :)
 

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I think you mentioned you had a small oven it may be as simple as the bread being too close to the sides of the oven and not enough hot air around the loaf. You sound very skilled so I am going to assume you have a digital readout for an exact oven temp.

SAF yeast is milled to a smaller size. You can mix right into the dry ingredients and shape the loaf in the first rising. You won't get the complex flavor this way but for daily breads it makes having fresh bread a snap. There are many artesian bread recipes online using this yeast that give you a very good loaf of bread. When I use my small convention oven I shape my dough into rolls rather than loaves.

It is important that the cat get into the flour at least once to properly season the bread.  
 
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jtbo

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I think you mentioned you had a small oven it may be as simple as the bread being too close to the sides of the oven and not enough hot air around the loaf. You sound very skilled so I am going to assume you have a digital readout for an exact oven temp.
SAF yeast is milled to a smaller size. You can mix right into the dry ingredients and shape the loaf in the first rising. You won't get the complex flavor this way but for daily breads it makes having fresh bread a snap. There are many artesian bread recipes online using this yeast that give you a very good loaf of bread. When I use my small convention oven I shape my dough into rolls rather than loaves.
It is important that the cat get into the flour at least once to properly season the bread.  
Oh, dark color of bred is not a problem, it is supposed to be like that, also rise is ok for that bread, it actually rose better than usual, there is very little gluten in that flour and I think that adds to it being low rising type of bread.

Only issue is with dough become too soft if I double the size of it, that is too soft before 1st rise, so flour needs to be added from what works with 1/2 size recipe, even in theory doubling size of recipe should give just same softness of dough. So to get over that issue I need to add more flour and it is then different from my recipe, it is then problematic to figure out proper ratio when mixing 3 different flour so that relation with each flour would stay the same.

That being said, with better oven, I'm sure there would be more improvements, with current one I can use only lowest and 2nd lowest position and never ever I can exceed 200C when baking bread or it will burn from top and be still raw, even when placed at the bottom, but I can manage with that, I have oven thermometer, but haven't used it for long time, readings are all over place depending where in oven I put it, so to not get depressed I just ignore oven temperature, I set it same position every time and try to remember to take bread out on time, after all, oven is in another building and when burning smell reaches me, there might not be anything left...

I put yeast to water first and mix it so that yeast dissolves to water, that and keeping water cool has solved issues with rising for me, it is cold or quite cool for water temp, no matter what recipe or instructions say, only way to really have success for me.

Oh, there actually is another problem, whenever baking or cooking, my cats decide to do disappearing trick, however when I made yeast bread smallest one was there and made attempts of stealing pieces of dough, which was bit exceptional.
 

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Whole grains will always make bread heavier not just darker. Some other options are adding steam by putting a cast iron pan in the bottom of the oven.  I'm building a Earth Oven over the winter so I can bake outside and achieve the steam and temp I want. Just doubling the recipe might not work I would start with at least 1/3 less water and add only as needed. You can also get vital wheat gluten with your heavier grained flours. I use a preheated stone in the oven. Even the temp in your home and the humidity can play in.

I use this site often http://www.thefreshloaf.com/
 
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Oh, I would love to have an outdoor oven, especially at summer it would be so nice.
I think that I even have cast iron doors for oven at some place, but putting oven together has been a task that I have been avoiding to take on, however some day I must buy some bricks or ask farmer friend to get some stones from field, I guess using those for the base would save with the costs quite a bit.

We have also very cold temps and lot of rain before the cold that needs to be dealt with, oven might not hold up the winter and I have not done enough reading yet to know all that is needed to make oven tolerate all weather conditions.
 

kittens mom

Kittens life was lost to a negligent veterinarian.
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Oh, I would love to have an outdoor oven, especially at summer it would be so nice.
I think that I even have cast iron doors for oven at some place, but putting oven together has been a task that I have been avoiding to take on, however some day I must buy some bricks or ask farmer friend to get some stones from field, I guess using those for the base would save with the costs quite a bit.

We have also very cold temps and lot of rain before the cold that needs to be dealt with, oven might not hold up the winter and I have not done enough reading yet to know all that is needed to make oven tolerate all weather conditions.
Cold and damp is one of the reasons I switched to the instant yeast for quick bread baking. I have a Breville bread machine with set programs and the option to set your own parameters. I looked into bread dough risers and the cost for the good ones was so close to the bread machine I opted for the Breville. If you are a purist this is made by King Arthur and on my list of things to get. the issue with the bread machine is you are limited to dough for one loaf or two smaller ones. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/bread-proofing-box
 

Winchester

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I switched over to instant yeast a few years ago. At the end of every year, I buy a pound of instant yeast (usually SAF), put it in a Rubbermaid container and keep it in the fridge. It will last me a year, depending on how much baking I do. It's so much cheaper to just buy a pound of the stuff and instant yeast is so much easier to work with. No big worries about the liquid temperatures being just so. You can still kill instant yeast if your liquid is way too hot, but you don't have to worry so much about temperature.
 
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