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Maybe this is a well-known trick but I'm still patting myself on the back for thinking it up recently, and I want to make sure you all know about it:

Let your dough rise in an insulated cooler! I have a small soft-sided one that works great, but any small cooler would work. The yeast generates heat as it eats and multiplies, and the cooler holds it in, keeping the dough nice and cozy (but not so warm that it speeds up the action to the detriment of the flavor, as happens when you put it into a warm oven). I used to wrap towels around the bowl, but the cooler is easier and more efficient. Do not stick dough that you've just removed from the fridge into the cooler, though, or you'll just be keeping it cold. Wait until it warms to room temp and then place it in the cooler. Happy baking! bluesbread

I guess there are two ways to look at it, 5 lbs of flour is the same as 5 lbs of wheat, but what is the yield? Like, how many cups of flour do you get from a cup of wheat berries?

Or, for baking purposes (and I do use my scale a lot), is it better to just weigh my wheat berries and then grind them and use that as my guide for making a loaf?

Consensus seems to be either use it IMMEDIATELY or have it wait a few days (more than three?)

I don't have a mill right now, but have been thinking about it for YEARS and now that I'm baking daily AND i make cakes, I'm wondering if it's more economical in the long run to grind my own wheat?

Melissa

I've been experimenting lately with sweet baking and haven't done much bread unless we needed it. My daughter's birthday is coming up and I'm trying to find a chocolate cake recipe and another flavor that will appease the non-chocolate folks. I've also been trying out cookies by the gross. I didn't know how much it would limit my bread baking time. Add to that the fact that I've had a cold for most of this week and it pretty much means that I haven't wanted to bake anything at all. Add to *that* the fact that I still don't have a decent digital camera and taking all the photos with film and then developing them later on in the week once I have a full roll is a little frustrating when you want to share things right away. But this thing is so tasty that I wanted to share. Had to.

I love butter. Butter makes almost anything better. I'm finding out that it makes bread especially tasty. I wanted a recipe today that gave me the taste of butter in the bread as well as on the outside of it.

This is what I call my Buttery White Bread. It's moist on the inside without being too dense. It's strong enough to hold up to tomato slices. The crust is soft without being overly so. It's soft enough to go well with about any sandwich filling. It's about the perfect sandwich bread for us.

Only took me a month of trying to come up with the right recipe. :p

You Will Need:

3.5 cups of unbleached bread flour (I used Gold Medal as I'm trying to get rid of it)

2.5 teaspoons yeast

2/3 cup milk

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup butter

salt to your taste

Directions:

In your bowl, combine the flour and yeast. I used active dry that I knew was good. Make a well and add your milk, water, and butter. Comebine to form a shaggy mass. Knead until a coherent ball of dough; about 7 minutes. Rest for 20-25 minutes. Stretch your dough a little bit and sprinkle on your salt. Depending on your butter being salted or not, adjust to your taste. Knead the salt in for about 7 minutes. Rise twice. Shape into loaf and put in greased loaf pan. Bake in a 400 degree oven until a thermometer reads 200 degrees. Cool. Cut. Eat.

This is the first loaf that I'm really proud of. Now it's time to work more on artisan breads. :)

Hi I have been baking bread for many years but only recently decided to try to bake artisianal breads.  I also decided I wanted to stick with WW flour, or at least no white flour, since I am already eating too much of that.  My first goal is to make a simple WW "baguette" in the pain ancienne style.  Here is more or less my current recipe:

400g flour 100%

340g water 85%

8 g salt 2%

<1/8 tsp yeast

You will see I am also trying to keep it simple.. get the simple version right first I figure.  I am using no starters bigas etc - just instant yeast.  The low amount of yeast and the high hydration are techniques I have gotten enamored with in my pizza dough making, along with a very long room-temperature fermentation.  

The recipe itself is pretty simple (and partly inspired by JMonkeys recipes here): mix all together in the early evening and leave out.  When it has risen do a stretch-and-fold.  If still awake when risen again do another.  Next morning early do another s&f, rise, and one last s&f.  After the final rise I gently dropped it on to parchment and gently stretched into a crude loaf shape with wet hands.   Immediately baked the loaf at 450F (no proofing following pain ancienne) and steamed the oven following pain ancienne again.  The final products have been nice, with a crumb that is quite airy, similar to a baguette.  I like the taste a lot.  However, they are too flat and wide.  I was planning on working on slightly less hydration and/or using a lot of bench flour when the final loaf is shaped to help hold it a bit perhaps (this also follows the pain ancienne recipe in Reinhart).  The loaves initially have a very nice crisp crust, but it quickly softens.  I am wondering if the high hydration is also keeping the final loaf on the moist side. Your thoughts appreciated.  I would particularly like to know if there was some recipe for a WW pain ancienne style baguette out there which I could draw from.  I have Reinharts WW book and did not find anything in there.

Scott