Bread gone good!

Hey baking peeps.  Check this out!

That's right, I baked a decent looking (and tasting) loaf of bread!  After yesterday's abject failure, this a huge improvement.

So how did this loaf come to be?  First job was to get the yeast going. This loaf was possibly slightly over-yeasted, with 5g of dried yeast in 280g of flour (1lb loaf).  However, after I had so much trouble getting my bread to prove yesterday, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it with the extra yeast.  I down-sized to a 1lb loaf this time, because I don't have a big enough tin to do a 2lb loaf (lesson learned yesterday, see "bread gone bad"), and it's just a waste of ingredients otherwise - just until I get the hang of it!

Exciting news though - I ordered a 2lb loaf tin off the internet last night.  I'm probably a lot more excited than I ought to be about this tin!

Anyway, I stuck the dried yeast in 150ml of warm sugary water and mixed it up.

After about 15 minutes, this had started to froth, at which point I added it to the flour and 1tsp of salt, dribbled in 10ml of sunflower oil, and pulled the whole lot together into a dough.  At this point, it didn't look very impressive!

Looks a bit sad just sat there, doesn't it?  Then I kneaded the dough for 20 minutes.  Why 20 minutes, you ask?  Well, that's just how long it took!  One of the tips I picked up at the Cake and Bake Show at the weekend was about how to know when your dough's ready.  Duncan Glendinning (co-author of "Bread Revolution", which I don't own... yet) says that you should knead until you have a window-pane effect. This is where the dough stretches into a fine sheet that you can see light through without tearing.  This means that the dough will be able to stretch and hold in the carbon dioxide produced by the yeast, rather than the gas just escaping.

This is what my window pane looked like:

Pretty good, eh?  You could say that my kneading can't be very good if it took me 20 minutes to get to this stage.  That's probably true!  Still, it'll get better.

I left it in the bowl for an hour for its first rise, and it nearly doubled in size (not like yesterday, where it barely grew at all).  I tried to do a before and after picture for you.  It was more of a "spread" than a rise, but I think it's all the same!

It then got knocked back.  Well, what actually happened is "I squeezed all the air out while peeling it out of the bowl", but it had the same effect!  I then squidged into a sort of loaf-sized sausage and dropped it into the tin.  I turned the oven on (230-C fan, with an empty baking tray sat in the bottom of the oven), and left the bread in front of the oven for it's second rise while the oven warmed up.

After knocking back:

Annoyingly, I forgot to take a picture of it after the second rise.  Basically, it had raised to the point where it was just creeping above the level of the tin.  I put the bread in the oven, threw a cup of water into the baking tray to create steam, and hoped for the best.  The bread puffed up some more, creating a nice dome above the level of the tin, and started to brown.  I turned the oven down after something like 5-10 minutes (190-C fan) - lost track of time a bit - then checked every few minutes by turning the loaf out and tapping the bottom.  I was hoping for a sort of hollow, springy sound, instead of the dull thud I got the first couple of times I tried!  I think it took about 20 minutes to bake, but I'm not entirely sure.  I'll keep a better eye on the clock next time.

The outcome is what you saw at the top of the page.  I think it's pretty impressive, especially given how horribly it went yesterday!  Tastes really good, too.  Can't wait to make sandwiches for work tomorrow.

So where do I go from here?  When my new tin arrives (and I've run out of bread to eat), I'm going to try upping the quantities and do a 2lb loaf.  The only question is what to do about the yeast...

Yesterday, I tried to do a 2lb loaf with 5g of dried yeast, and really struggled to get it to rise properly.  Today, I did a 1lb loaf with 5g of dried yeast, and it seems to have gone fairly well.  But the recipe says that 5g should be plenty for a 2lb loaf, which makes me think I'm doing something wrong with the yeast.  Maybe I'm not activating it properly?

I think I'm going to try a 2lb loaf with 5g of dried yeast, but try using warmer water than before, and possibly an extra 1/2 tsp of sugar.  I think I need to be sure it's getting a *proper* froth on before I add it to the flour.  I'll let you know how I get on!

Cheers for reading!

Bob x