holesome bread (literally)

August 25, 2008 7:14 AM

I'm following a recipe for bread I got from mom, but have ended up with too many loafs that look like this. What to do?

The original recipe is half graham, half white flour, with lot of fresh yeast. The dough rises quickly, and is only allowed to sit for 2x10 minutes (the second time in the baking pans) and is then popped into an oven for 40 or so minutes at 200°C.

The first couple of times, I made it with rye fluor and the second attempt was successful and full of raisin goodness and such. But I can't get it to work with graham, and can't figure out what the hell I'm doing wrong; As you might be able to tell from the picture, the bottom of it is dense and wet. The only difference that I'm aware of is that our oven is of the hot-circulating-air kind as opposed to moms top-grill-thingy kind.

Help me save face and bring honour back to my family recipe!

posted by monocultured to food & drink (13 comments total)

Looks like you need to punch down the dough before letting it rise in the pan. Punching down will split up some of the larger bubbles in the dough and redistribute the yeast. What seems to be happening in your photo is as the dough rises a few large bubbles form in the dough, these then combine in the oven to form one really large bubble in the center.
posted by borkencode at 7:24 AM on August 25, 2008

Are you sure your oven is at the right temp? Do you have an oven thermometer in there? This could be due to excess heat rapidly rising and cooking the outside and not the inside.
posted by Science! at 7:31 AM on August 25, 2008

It's possible that you aren't kneading it sufficiently. Unless you really, really distribute the yeast evenly throughout the loaf, you'll get bubbles like this. It's possible that graham and rye have a large enough difference in absorbency that what worked for the rye doesn't work for the graham, but I don't know enough about flour to tell you that. All I know is that if you're getting bubbles in your loaf like that, it needs kneading.
posted by valkyryn at 7:33 AM on August 25, 2008

Is there always one big hole right in the center? An ingredient with more moisture than the other ingredients (like fruit) that is distributed unevenly will make holes like that because of the expanding water vapor. This is why my fruit croissants always turn out hollow (but delicious). I guess you don't have fruit, but is there a log of sloppy wet graham in the middle? It might also explain the wet bottom as unevaporated moisture trickles down due to gravity.

200 deg C should be enough to cook any reasonable loaf of that size in 40-45 minutes if it's not too wet and moisture is distributed evenly.
posted by rocketpup at 7:43 AM on August 25, 2008

Are you shaping your loaf correctly? You want to punch it down, pat it out into a rectangle, dimple slightly to break big air bubbles, and shape it into a tight roll with surface tension to it, as at the end of this video (start from like three minutes in). This will get rid of the big center bubbles.

Also, try using a pizza stone or even a cast iron skillet in the oven to hold the heat at a steadier temperature. Fluctuations in heat (because of convection, or opening and closing the door) can do weird things to bread.

It also looks to me like the dough perhaps wasn't kneaded long or hard enough, and hasn't developed the gluten to support its risen self. Try using bread flour instead of white all-purpose, and maybe play with the proportions of specialty to wheat flour? And knead, hard, giving the dough a couple rests, until the gluten is properly developed (a nugget of dough will stretch between your hands rather than snap).
posted by peachfuzz at 7:48 AM on August 25, 2008

Rye doesn't have as much gluten, so your bread was probably denser, and too heavy to form such large air pockets. As said above, more kneading should help, but it may be hard to avoid in this kind of recipe. You are loading up the loaf with a lot of yeast, forcing it to rise very fast. Are you using the rapid-rise type yeast? If so, try and find regular yeast instead. Since this is a family recipe, it probably pre-dates the quick-rise stuff which is so common nowadays.

When you have some time, just as an experiment, try a batch with just one half-teaspoon of yeast per loaf and give the loaves two hours for each rise. Tasty bread with a good crumb takes time. Unless you want your bread to taste more like yeast than wheat.
posted by rikschell at 7:53 AM on August 25, 2008

Work it! Kneed it! Punch it!

Got it. I'll try that out and post back. Thanks for the suggestions.

I've also heard that unless you preheat the pans (and mine are rather thick) the cold bottom temperature can cause a bottom-heavy bread. I'm not used to such rapidly rising dough, but since my mom makes the Best Bread Ever™ using the same recipe, I've been following it blindly.
posted by monocultured at 8:36 AM on August 25, 2008

How about sharing the recipe with us? I would love to try baking a loaf or two the Best Bread Ever™ for my family!
posted by Daddy-O at 8:45 AM on August 25, 2008

That's some freaky-looking bread.

Re: warming the pans - when my wife makes bread (with what sounds like a similar recipe, at least the logistics of it) she sets the dough-in-pans on top of the oven while it preheats.
posted by attercoppe at 9:47 AM on August 25, 2008

Daddy-o: I'll post the recipe once I've worked out what I'm screwing up.

The oven is too well isolated for exteriour pre-heating use, but I should be able to put them in for a short while or just pour some hot water around them or something.

Heh, my loaf got lolcatted.
posted by monocultured at 10:07 AM on August 25, 2008

I am looking forward to trying the recipe!
posted by Daddy-O at 1:55 PM on August 25, 2008

Best Bread Ever™
(as long as mom bakes it)

Most measures are metric. Get with the program here.

• 75 grams of fresh baking yeast
• 7.5 dl - Lukewarm water
• 6.5 dl - Wheat flour
• 6 dl - Graham flour
• 2 tablespoons of rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons of crushed flax seeds
• 2 tablespoons of sunflower seeds
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of sugar or honey
• Crushed walnuts or anything helthish you like. (As mentioned, raisins were nice)

Instructions

1. Crumble the yeast and mix it with the salt and sugar. (or honey)


2. Pour the water and stir, preferably with a wooded spoon.


3. Add the flour, flax, sunflower seeds and whatever else you'd like to add, and stir meticulously to avoid lumps.


4. Set aside and let it rise for 10-15 minutes; it rises quickly, so watch it.


5. Oil two breadpans, and sprinkle them with the oats.


6. Pour the dough into the forms (Yes it pours. It's very fluid) and let them stand for another 10-15 minutes. Make sure that the dough does not rise above the edge of the forms least the dough spills over.


7. Put into oven at 200°C for 30-40 minutes, depending on oven. The colour ought to be bronze and the crust hard.

The odd thing is that this bread never tastes yeasty, even thought it's a lot of it for such a small sized batch. I've gotten this to work well with rye, but not graham; maybe I was just being lazy and didn't stir enough. I'm going up to visit mom in a couple of weeks time and will make sure to get a video of the whole process.
posted by monocultured at 6:38 AM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh, and the ingredients are all based on what's available in Sweden; From what I hear the quality of flour (amount of gluten and so on) differs somewhat between countries, so your milage may vary.
posted by monocultured at 6:45 AM on August 26, 2008