Baking Bread in a Bread Machine

[sherry2721]

I am thinking about switching from hand making bread to using a bread machine for my bread. I just don't have enough time to go through the whole baking process.

 

I am wondering does anybody have any good blog sites that have bread machine recipes and/or resources?

 

Thanks!

[rotuts]

KAFlour is all you need :

 

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/bread/bread-machine

 

i like their SAF instant yeast

 

http://search.kingarthurflour.com/search?p=Q&view=grid&af=type%3Aproducts&w=yeast

 

you can also call them and talk to a real baker !

 

Ive been to their store in NE.  its fantastic.

 

there always someone there to talk to you and help you with your baking.

 

not that much to do in VT and you will be talking to someone in VT who really is a baker.

[rob1234]

I quite like this book http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Book-definitive-making-machine/dp/0600629953/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433514513&sr=8-1

 

It does come across as more of a beginners book but there is a variety of recipes and it has everything in weights which I found hard to find for bread machine recipes.

[BarneyDorfman]

I'm making 100% of our bread in the (2.5 lb.) bread machine, since about 4 weeks ago.  We lost the paddle a couple of years ago and I would NOT pay $14.00 for a new one on eBay, but I found one for $11.00 and broke down and bought it, and I've been making a loaf of bread about every other day.  Experimenting with ratios, etc... and right now I'm using:
 

4 2/3 c. bread flour

4 T. sugar

1 t. salt

1 1/2 c. warm water

2 T. olive oil

1 stick unsalted butter

2 t. yeast

I use the "dark" setting (vs. "light" or "medium") and it comes out medium, which is where I want it.  Results are becoming more & more consistent as I become less experimental and more "static" with the ingredients.  From instinct only, I put the 2 t. yeast into the 1 1/2 c. warm water and let it get foamy for about a 1/2 hour before dumping it into the bread machine, and this is the most annoying part of the whole process; waiting for the yeast to "activate" or whatever the correct word is.  The recipe I got online did not say to do this, and a couple of times I've just thrown the dry yeast into the machine and the load comes out stunted and dense, wet and compacted.  I figure that if by letting the yeast "activate" I'm saving on yeast by letting it "grow" before dumping it in. Oh, and I add 1 t. sugar into the warm water to give the yeast something to eat.

 

My yeast supply is dwindling, and I'm looking at it with a tight-fisted, penny-pinching and jaundiced eye.

 

I understand "starter yeast" only as a theoretical concept.  I've never actually seen it in the wild.  Books I've read say it's liquid; water and flour and some yeast.  They say it takes 2 days to "grow".  But for some reason, I want to say that nomadic, beduin jews in the desert used to carry "starter" yeast, or dough around with them and it was solid, like dough.  Maybe it WAS dough, IDK.

 

So that's my level of awareness/confusion.  Books say "starter yeast" is goopy brown liquid, and I remember something years ago that implied it was simply dough.  I've also read a few things here and learned that you can't freeze yeast because the cells will burst and they won't come back to life when you thaw them.

 

So, from all that, here are my questions:

 

1)  What are the correct words for all of this stuff?  I'm a word person and recognize that you don't learn anything until you learn the correct terminology.

 

2)  If "starter yeast" is goopy brown liquid roughly equal parts of flour and water, how does using it affect my recipe (above)?  And how much "starter yeast" do I use?  One recipe said you use half (1c. water with 1 c. flour) and add more flour and water to the leftover to make more "starer yeast", but then what does that do to my recipe?

 

3)  Why use half a 2 c. of starter yeast (1c. water and 1c. flour) when I only use 2 t. of "activated" yeast?  If I'm "growing" yeast, why can't I grow yeast concentrated enough so that I only need 2 t. of it?

 

4)  What is "activated" yeast, and is there such a thing as "inactivated" yeast?  can you buy "inactivated yeast", and if so, why would you want to?

 

5)  This thing I do with the yeast and the warm water and sugar:  Is there a word for it?  Does everyone do this?  The recipe I started with only called for 2 t. and didn't mention letting the yeast "activate" in the water.  If I didn't do this on my own initiative, my bread would always be horrible and never come out right.  Maybe the recipe assumes the dough has a longer "rise"  time?   Would a longer "rise" time compensate for using the yeast dry?

 

Etc...  I don't want to clog the OP with all these questions, but more or less this is where I'm coming from.  Any help appreciated and thanks in advance.

 

Oh, and PS, I figure I belong here.  I've been self-taught cooking for years and never connected to anyone and I've found more interesting things and people in the 2 hours I've spend looking at the forum than I've ever found anywhere else.  I'm a "forum person", which means most of what I learn, I learn online and a lot of that is in conversation with people on forums (vs. static reading material and youtube videos, etc...).  I have great respect for forums and the people on them, in general, and this one, I can tell, is special.  Glad to be here, is my point.

[keychris]

19 minutes ago, BarneyDorfman said:

I've also read a few things here and learned that you can't freeze yeast because the cells will burst and they won't come back to life when you thaw them.

You can't freeze *live* yeast. But most yeast you would buy from a supermarket will be manufactured to be stored for long periods of time, I imagine freeze-dried. This yeast should be stored frozen: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/learn/yeast.html

 

I think by "starter yeast" you may be referring to what would be called a poolish. You can use a variety of different methods - poolish, biga, sourdough starter, or commercial yeast. A quick google on those would probably answer more questions!

 

The thing you do with water and sugar and yeast... it's called activation! It's to hydrate the yeast and get it woken up from the dormant state and ready to rumble. Half an hour isn't long enough for the yeast to produce more yeast cells - I think it's around 90 minutes or two hours, something like that. It's been a while since I looked at the theory of yeast To be honest, I never bother with activation. I just dump the dry weight of yeast I require in the dough and away it goes. Your initial rise phase would possibly be longer but I've never done a side-by-side test. The only times this might not work would be in doughs that contain a harsh environment for yeast, eg enriched doughs high in sugar.

 

Where does your recipe come from?

 

I've never used a bread-maker, I just do it by hand You're probably going to get someone soon tell you that you'll get better results if you weigh all your ingredients instead of using volume measures, too. Which is also true

 

Head to the library if you can and get them to get you Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. It's an excellent starter. There's plenty of others (I own a lot of them!) but this is the one I like the best.

 

As something else interesting, fats retard the gluten creation in your dough. So by introducing your fats at the start with everything else, you may have a different final product than if you let the dough mix without the fats and then added them later - but I'm not sure if you can do that with a bread machine. I would usually let my kenwood do the work for 5-6 minutes and then add in the butter - I feel it makes a difference. Try it and see if you get a different (better / worse) product

[JoNorvelleWalker]

@BarneyDorfman welcome to eGullet!  Inactivated yeast is just dead yeast cells used for their nutritional value (though not by me).  If you have instant yeast it may simply be mixed with the flour of the recipe before adding liquid.

[Lisa Shock]

I'd look at weighing the dry ingredients, like your flour, for more consistent results.

 

You can purchase a really big bag of yeast for about $3-$4 (it's been a while since I bought a bag) at Costco or Smart & Final or Restaurant Depot. I buy one every couple of years and pour the yeast into a canning jar which I vacuum seal and keep in the fridge. You don't have to refrigerate it, but, I live in AZ and sometimes the house can get very warm if we have a power failure in the summer.

 

Active dry yeast has large granules, Instant yeast has a much finer texture. Active dry needs to be 'bloomed' in water, yes bloom is the word you are looking for, instant yeast can just be mixed in with the flour straight into the mixer, no extra steps. Instant is the choice of many bakeries due to the ease of use. There's also a less common type, called osmotolerant, for use in sweet doughs as sugar is hygroscopic and in large amounts can affect yeast performance by drying it out too much.

 

I recommend Ciril Hitz's books, his formulas always come out just right for me. (his website has corrections for his books on it)

 

Welcome to eG, happy baking!

[BarneyDorfman]

So I've taken the advice and measured my flour today.  Recipe calls for 4 2/3 c. and what I measured-out weighed 26.05 oz.  Now I see why my bread maker has a scale attached to it.  At first I thought it was stupid.  After all, who uses a scale to measure things like flour?

 

Also threw a couple Tablespoons of flour into the 1 1/2 c. warm water, along with the 1 t. of sugar, in order to "bloom" my yeast better.  And I'm going to give it an hour to bloom, instead of the previous 1/2 hour.  Next I suppose I'm going to need to by a food thermometer so I can control for the temperature of the water.

 

I wonder if I can buy bulk sized yeast on eBay?  That seems like the obvious place to get it.

EDIT***

Found this:

Quote

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-LB-Red-Star-Bakers-Active-Dry-Yeast-TWO-32-oz-Vacuum-Packed-Bags-Bread-Machine-/141955598059?hash=item210d3686eb:g:gsoAAOSw7aBVKIQU

 

It looks like the best deal, in terms of price and distance (I prefer US only, and the closest to Texas the better.), in case anyone has an opinion on this specific product, and vendor.  I'll hold off buying until the end of the day.

Edited May 3, 2016 by BarneyDorfman (log)

[mgaretz]

That's the same yeast they sell at Costco for a lot less.

[Lisa Shock]

3 hours ago, mgaretz said:

That's the same yeast they sell at Costco for a lot less.

 

Yeah, I kid you not, it's like $3.29 a bag at Costco. Heck, I could buy one at costco and ship it to you for less than that. Still, for what the shipping cost, you could have another 2 bags or so.

[liuzhou]

18 hours ago, BarneyDorfman said:

After all, who uses a scale to measure things like flour?

 

Almost everyone.

 

Have you read eGullet's Kitchen Scale manifesto?

[rotuts]

yes, you need to weigh things.  Ive had a bread machine for a zillion years and a scale for almost as long.

 

night turns to day.

 

this is the yeast I use :

 

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/saf-red-instant-yeast-16-oz

 

I buy enough to make the total deal reasonable after adding shipping.

 

freeze what you are not using.

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

If you go to the King Arthur website you'll see weights for their flours, which I assume are essentially the same as other flours at least in terms of weight. For instance, all purpose flour weighs between 110 and 115 grams, bread flour weighs 120 grams, etc. I use this to convert recipes from volume measurements to weight and have found that I get better, reproducible, results. Using volume measurements means that you can make the same recipe several times and get different results each time. I have a nice little digital scale that gives me weights in both ounces and grams; I use the latter around here almost exclusively because Mexico uses the metric system. Takes a little time to figure it out, of course.

 

Nancy in Patzcuaro

 

 

[BarneyDorfman]

Thanks for all the replies.  I don't have a Costco membership and this is the 2nd time in a week someone has given me a reason to get one.  (The other reason was cheap pet treats.)  55 Dollars for the privilege of giving someone my money is totally counter intuitive to my nature.  They should be paying ME to walk in the door.

 

Been shopping for yeast and once you add in the shipping charges, my deal at eBay is still the best one.  2 - 2 lb. bags for less than $20.00.  Not sure if I'll ever use 4 lbs. of yeast, but for $20.00, knowing that I'll never need to worry about buying it again seems like a good deal to me.

 

I've started weighing my flour, and next will be my water.  Don't think I'm going to be so fussy as to weigh anything else, since the flour and the water are the two big ones and it's the ratio between the two that has the most impact on what you get at the end of the process.

 

New thing I did on accident last week I thought I'd share.  Two bananas too ripe to be enjoyable to eat got thrown into the bread maker on a whim and what came out wasn't "banana bread", but it wasn't horrible either.  Somewhat sweeter than standard white bread, a little heavier and denser, with a light and not unpleasant "banana" flavor.  It was a good way to avoid having to condemn 2 perfectly good bananas to the compost pile.

[keychris]

3 hours ago, BarneyDorfman said:

I've started weighing my flour, and next will be my water.  Don't think I'm going to be so fussy as to weigh anything else, since the flour and the water are the two big ones and it's the ratio between the two that has the most impact on what you get at the end of the process.

 

I don't want to harp on about it, but weighing all the ingredients is important - particularly if you're using things like brown sugar that compress easily and make reliable volume measures tricksy. If you want to get reliable results out, you need to put reliable numbers in

 

Banana in actual bread sounds like an interesting experiment!

[Fernwood]

13 hours ago, keychris said:

 

I don't want to harp on about it, but weighing all the ingredients is important - particularly if you're using things like brown sugar that compress easily and make reliable volume measures tricksy. If you want to get reliable results out, you need to put reliable numbers in

 

Banana in actual bread sounds like an interesting experiment!

 

I weigh everything because it's more efficient than measuring cups, both for the measuring and for the clean-up.  

[BarneyDorfman]

Okay so today I'm ready to talk about this "Starter Yeast" thing.

 

How to do, what to do, etc...

 

My recipe uses 1 1/2 c. water and 2 t. yeast.  I add 1 t. sugar and 1 T flour to my warm water and let it "bloom" for about an hour before dumping it in.

 

How to I translate this method to using "Starter Yeast"?

[Lisa Shock]

Sourdough starter is a fermented liquid composed of just flour and water. It's easier to make with organic flour, as that will contain some wild yeast as well as beneficial bacteria. HERE's a pretty good tutorial.

 

 

Making real yeast is a tricky business, I have only done it once. It requires a lot of hops, and once made only keeps for about a week under refrigeration.

[keychris]

8 hours ago, BarneyDorfman said:

Okay so today I'm ready to talk about this "Starter Yeast" thing.

 

How to do, what to do, etc...

 

My recipe uses 1 1/2 c. water and 2 t. yeast.  I add 1 t. sugar and 1 T flour to my warm water and let it "bloom" for about an hour before dumping it in.

 

How to I translate this method to using "Starter Yeast"?

 

If I was in your position, but with my longer experience, I would make a sponge. Take the full amount of water and half the flour. Add maybe 1/2tsp of yeast, mix it together. Leave it at room temperature for a while, until it starts to show activity (starts to bubble - it will be very wet, so it probably won't rise) then put it in the fridge overnight. The next day, let it warm back up to room temp for an hour or so, then dump it, the rest of the flour, yeast, salt, whatever else is in the recipe into your machine and away you go.

 

The idea of using preferments (what this is) is that the yeast starts acting on the starch in the flour, breaking them down and creating a bunch of extra flavour with the longer cold ferment in the fridge than you would get from the short ferment you have in the bread machine.

[rotuts]

@keychris   

 

Ive done this hoping for the added flavor you mention.  My bread machine did not have the ability to deal with such a wet 'starter'

 

Ive mixers up the final dough in my cuisinart using the metal dough blade, which worked fine.

 

but it was too much work for a 'no-work loaf '

[BarneyDorfman]

16 hours ago, keychris said:

 

If I was in your position, but with my longer experience, I would make a sponge. Take the full amount of water and half the flour. Add maybe 1/2tsp of yeast, mix it together. Leave it at room temperature for a while, until it starts to show activity (starts to bubble - it will be very wet, so it probably won't rise) then put it in the fridge overnight. The next day, let it warm back up to room temp for an hour or so, then dump it, the rest of the flour, yeast, salt, whatever else is in the recipe into your machine and away you go.

 

The idea of using preferments (what this is) is that the yeast starts acting on the starch in the flour, breaking them down and creating a bunch of extra flavour with the longer cold ferment in the fridge than you would get from the short ferment you have in the bread machine.

Okay so you are luring me in with the sexy promise of a "bunch of extra flavOr" , but like rotuts alluded to, there's the time & hassle factor to consider.  But then, there's the promise of "a bunch of extra flavor", so... hmm....

 

How much "extra flavor"?

 

So thanks for the suggestion of a "sponge" although I don't see a connection between that word and the mechanics of the suggestion.  Also you included the word "yeast" in the list of ingredients that get "thrown in" to the bread machine the next day.  I assume mentally you were just running down the list without considering that we just spent 12+ hours growing all the yeast a person could possibly want in the refrigerator.

 

Do we add yeast after growing a "sponge"?

 

I'm going to try this suggestion, just to know how much "extra flavor" is involved here.  But for daily, routine purposes I need a method to produce a loaf of bread every 1 or 2 days, that doesn't require me to use 2 t. of yeast every day, when I could "grow my own" instead.  Although I'm also getting the idea that 4 lbs. of yeast from eBay is going to be the easiest way to have long-term yeast, but since the whole point of the thread was to explore a workable method (for me) to make and continue to use "starter yeast" for my daily bread-machine produced bread, I'd like to at least complete the purpose of the thread, i.e. get a workable method of daily "starter yeast" and make bread with it for (maybe a week) before I (probably) decide it's not worth the hassle and drop $20.00 on 4 lbs. of yeast, which (doing calculations now...)

Here's an online "pounds of yeast to teaspoons" converter I just found:

 

http://www.traditionaloven.com/culinary-arts/baking/dry-yeast/convert-pound-lb-to-tea-spoon-tsp.html

 

Which says I get 640 teaspoons from 4 lbs. of yeast.

 

At 2 t. per loaf and a loaf every 1.5 days, 4 lbs yeast = 640 t. yeast / 2 t. X 1.5 days = 480 days / 365 days in a year = 1.3 years worth of yeast, at the rate I am currently making it.

 

For $20.00.

 

GOD I LOVE the internet.  Who would have thought that someone online would go to the trouble of making a "pounds of yeast to teaspoons of yeast" converter????

 

Anyways, those are my variables, and my thoughts.  Probably not worth the hassle of doing "starter yeast" in order to save less than $20.00 a year, but part of my identity is to make what I need to the greatest extent possible.  I have a strong streak of "prepper" in me, and even if I don't actually do it day in and day out, I'd like to at least know that, if necessary, I could make a "go" of things without relying on a daily supply of yeast.

 

So, with all that said, I assume that there will some variation on the "sponge" method in order to use half the "sponge" for today's bread, add more water and flour for tomorrow's bread.  Is this something I'm just going to have to figure out on my own?  Can someone give me a rough idea to start with?

Edited May 8, 2016 by BarneyDorfman (log)

[Anna N]

I bake a lot of bread but I still confess I have no clue what "starter yeast" is. 

[keychris]

I included yeast in the list of things to throw in on day two because yeast will not grow very quickly in the refrigerator. I mentioned earlier that the growth cycle for one yeast cell to become two yeast cells is ~1.5-2hrs. In the fridge this is much longer. What you're doing in the fridge is allowing the enzymes the yeasts produce to break down the (relatively) very large molecules of starch into (relatively) small molecules of different sugars. How much extra flavour? You'd have to do a side by side test, I've never bothered

[JoNorvelleWalker]

4 hours ago, keychris said:

I included yeast in the list of things to throw in on day two because yeast will not grow very quickly in the refrigerator. I mentioned earlier that the growth cycle for one yeast cell to become two yeast cells is ~1.5-2hrs. In the fridge this is much longer. What you're doing in the fridge is allowing the enzymes the yeasts produce to break down the (relatively) very large molecules of starch into (relatively) small molecules of different sugars. How much extra flavour? You'd have to do a side by side test, I've never bothered

 

I'm not positive, but as a quondam biochemist, I'm pretty sure non-GMO yeasts lack the ability to produce enzymes to break down starch to sugar.

 

I think the flavor comes from organic acids.

 

For my bread I use a poolish -- flour, water, and a tiny amount of yeast, ripened overnight at cool room temperature -- along with a normal amount of yeast in the final dough.  The poolish is for flavor, not so much for leavening.

[BarneyDorfman]

20 hours ago, keychris said:

I included yeast in the list of things to throw in on day two because yeast will not grow very quickly in the refrigerator. I mentioned earlier that the growth cycle for one yeast cell to become two yeast cells is ~1.5-2hrs. In the fridge this is much longer. What you're doing in the fridge is allowing the enzymes the yeasts produce to break down the (relatively) very large molecules of starch into (relatively) small molecules of different sugars. How much extra flavour? You'd have to do a side by side test, I've never bothered

 

Alright well this answers one questions and creates another.  The idea that yeasts produce enzyme is new to me, so thanks for that.  Applied bread science.  But then it seems to me that the the "sponge" thing is to break down a percentage of the flour, but not all of it, for purposes of flavor, and not so much to grow yeast, which is what I'm aiming for.

 

Why put it in the refrigerator? The sponge can break down flour and grow yeast both at room temperature.  But again the best part is the yeast growth rate, because that gives me something to think about when "blooming" my yeast.  I've been dumping it in after about 45 minutes, which means that my yeast population has only been given enough time to increase by 50%.  Now I want to know what the upper-end of what I assume is a Bell Curve looks like.  i.e. What happens after 3 hours?  6 hours?  12 hours?  etc...