I love it when I get an email asking me a bread related question. Today’s email was asking “how can I use diastatic malt powder?” This is a great question as I too had fallen victim to buying a packet of this, using it in a couple of loaves, and then finding it loitering at […]
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Gluten is only present in wheat flour once you add water. The proteins gliadin and glutenin can start to form chains as soon as the dough is hydrated and these protein chains form the gluten network. The gluten network adds strength to the dough. It allows the dough to expand when the yeast expels carbon
You have made your dough, left it to rise and nothing has happened. Why is your dough not rising? There are a number of things which might be happening. Check your yeast is still in date Your yeast might be past its best. Fresh yeast lasts about three weeks from manufacture if it is kept
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Understanding baker’s percentages helps you to understand how to adapt a bread recipe and how to change a recipe from one loaf to multiple loaves. But, for me the most important thing baker’s percentage helps me with is to understand the hydration of the dough. Or, in other words, how much water I should add
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Making a new loaf out of an old one I always have crusts of loaves lying on my bread board and so I often make a new loaf out of the old one. I got the idea from James Morton’s Brilliant Bread book. He calls it The Revival Loaf, I am calling it the Recycled
Understanding the stages of bread making helps make the process easier. When you start making bread the whole thing can be a bit confusing. You aren’t sure when your bread should be left to rise; or when it should be shaped; or when it’s ready to bake. Following the twelve stages of bread making as
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Last week, in my post about my top three books for beginner bread makers I mentioned Marmite bread, with reference to James Morton’s book Brilliant Bread, where I got the initial idea for this recipe. (It’s a great book that should be on everyone’s shelf.) I offer Marmite bread as a choice for people to
Whilst I am working I sometimes like to listen to podcasts. There is a wealth of information out there that you can just absorb as you go about your daily business. If you want to learn more about bread – whether that’s making it, the history of it or how grain gets from the farmer
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On Sunday, Veg Patch Kitchen spent the day at The Greenwood Centre in Ironbridge at the annual Grow Local event run by Transition Town Telford. It’s a lovely community day, with lots of plants available to buy from local growers or you can take your garden tools to be sharpened and experience how to look
