The Bread Topic (2015-2016)

kayb · February 21, 2016

Question. My copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Bread Bible came in today, and I was perusing recipes. I noted she specified, in italics, UNBLEACHED all-purpose flour in several recipes. I have, at present, 20 pounds of Gold Medal BLEACHED a/p flour, because I caught it on an exceptional sale at the grocery recently. Will the recipes work as well with that? What quality does the unbleached flour add that are absent with the bleached?

JoNorvelleWalker · February 21, 2016

10 hours ago, Anna N said:

I was surprised at how much this flatbread reminded me of naan.

Do you have a recipe, Anna?

Or at least a technique?

Anna N · February 21, 2016

5 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Do you have a recipe, Anna?

Or at least a technique?

Here you go. I made the dough in the Thermomix but you could easily do it by hand or in a stand mixer.

Panaderia Canadiense · February 21, 2016

20 hours ago, kayb said:

Question. My copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Bread Bible came in today, and I was perusing recipes. I noted she specified, in italics, UNBLEACHED all-purpose flour in several recipes. I have, at present, 20 pounds of Gold Medal BLEACHED a/p flour, because I caught it on an exceptional sale at the grocery recently. Will the recipes work as well with that? What quality does the unbleached flour add that are absent with the bleached?

Go ahead with the bleached - its characteristics in bread making aren't sufficiently different from unbleached to throw off the recipes.

The difference is one of nutrition, not of handling.

Panaderia Canadiense · February 21, 2016

Pan Injerto (literally, "grafted bread") - this is a typical style from Ambato, although I use blue corn and quinua-herb challahs instead of the more traditional simple pan de agua and pan de yema (water and yolk breads, which despite their names are also styles of challah). It came out really well - good loft and excellent crumb.

Injerto.jpg.a01925f4256b0785e597f9628ea7

kayb · February 22, 2016

1 hour ago, Panaderia Canadiense said:

Go ahead with the bleached - its characteristics in bread making aren't sufficiently different from unbleached to throw off the recipes.

The difference is one of nutrition, not of handling.

Thanks. Doing the sponge for her potato sandwich bread tonight; will mix dough tomorrow.

SLB · February 22, 2016

I thought bleached flour was for recipes that aspire to rise but involve a lot of additional ingredients that are heavy -- butter, sugar, buttermilk, etc. Bleached flour will effect a better rise where there is a heavy load.

Interestingly enough, my regular non-gourmet grocery store basically switches out all the flours to bleached when the holidays roll around, and you can't find unbleached flour there until after the new year. I assume that's so that customers aren't complaining that their sugary festival foods didn't perform like they remember.

I'm no expert, though. And I don't know what happens if you use bleached flour in a flour-yeast-water-alone scenario. Please do report back.

Edited February 22, 2016 by SLB (log)

keychris · February 22, 2016

I've never seen bleached flour in any shops here, ever!

I don't look that hard though

cakewalk · February 22, 2016

The whole bleached/unbleached thing confuses me. RLB had an explanation of it, I think it was in The Cake Bible, I'll try to find it later. In Nick Malgieri's books, in some cake recipes he specifically asks for bleached flour, other times unbleached. Other authors do the same, so clearly the different flours do aim for different textures. The late, lamented King Arthur Flour cake flour (Queen Guinevere), which they no longer make, was bleached. They decided to no longer use any bleached flours. A shame, because that was such a beautiful flour, made the lightest cakes. But as mentioned above, I don't think it would make much of a difference in a yeasted product. But then I wonder why RLB specifically asked for unbleached. Well, let us know how it comes out. I have no doubt that it will be great.

SLB · February 22, 2016

I did not realize that KAF had discontinued the Queen Guinevere! I have a bit left from over a year ago, and actually made the RLB chocolate bread with it earlier today. It's a gift for a friend who is mourning; but I really wish I'd gone ahead and made two of 'em. That was just dumb.

You can see I used a bit too large of a loaf pan. But it should taste alright. We're talking chocolate here.

Edited February 22, 2016 by SLB (log)

keychris · February 22, 2016

12 minutes ago, SLB said:

You can see I used a bit too large of a loaf pan. But it should taste alright.

I'm not seeing much wrong there

JoNorvelleWalker · February 22, 2016

19 hours ago, Anna N said:

Here you go. I made the dough in the Thermomix but you could easily do it by hand or in a stand mixer.

Is a Thermomat like a Silpat?? Is the dough really fried rather than baked?

JoNorvelleWalker · February 22, 2016

16 hours ago, cakewalk said:

The whole bleached/unbleached thing confuses me. RLB had an explanation of it, I think it was in The Cake Bible, I'll try to find it later. In Nick Malgieri's books, in some cake recipes he specifically asks for bleached flour, other times unbleached. Other authors do the same, so clearly the different flours do aim for different textures. The late, lamented King Arthur Flour cake flour (Queen Guinevere), which they no longer make, was bleached. They decided to no longer use any bleached flours. A shame, because that was such a beautiful flour, made the lightest cakes. But as mentioned above, I don't think it would make much of a difference in a yeasted product. But then I wonder why RLB specifically asked for unbleached. Well, let us know how it comes out. I have no doubt that it will be great.

I did not know poor, dear Guinevere was discontinued. I still have some. I do not use it much.

I should get in the habit of labeling my flours.

Edited February 22, 2016 by JoNorvelleWalker
Spelling, of course (log)

keychris · February 22, 2016

2 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Is a Thermomat like a Silpat?? Is the dough really fried rather than baked?

thermomat is just a TM branded silicon baking mat, yup. and you definitely cook it in the pan

keychris · February 22, 2016

My children wanted a fruit loaf. I soaked 70g each of raisins, dried apricots & glace orange in orange juice overnight and added them after the butter in the base recipe for "Poor Man's Brioche" from Bread Baker's Apprentice, added an extra 50g of flour to firm the dough up a little and voila! I also include cinnamon, cloves, ginger and mixed spice in the dough (~ 1/2tsp of each, 1tsp of cinnamon). I made a glaze from the juice left after soaking the fruit and boiling it briefly with a small amount of sugar and water, which I cooled and then brushed over the hot loaf immediately after it came out of the oven.

The kids all loved it

Anna N · February 22, 2016

@keychris

I love a good fruit loaf and yours looks exceptional.

Anna N · February 22, 2016

Pita bread baked in the Breville smart oven. I have a small pizza stone from another oven that fits remarkably well.

lindag · February 22, 2016

It would seem that unbleached flour is pretty much a thing of the past now, I never see it in stores any longer.

kayb · February 22, 2016

I had dashed into the local Price Cutter (warehouse-style grocery) recently to pick up butter, because it's consistently a dollar a pound less than Kroger. Saw Gold Medal for $1.77 a five-pound bag. Unless it's on sale, it's $3.39 at Kroger. I stocked up. All they had was bleached.

SLB · February 22, 2016

One other faint memory comes to mind re bleaching, from something I read somewhere: bleaching was habitual with soft wheats (winter wheat, maybe?), that were typical of southern wheat crops. You can't get the kind of rise (or maybe it's the chew?) from soft wheat that is customary for northern breads without bleaching the flour. Bleaching subsequently became associated with a coincident preference for paler-colored flour, and thus paler resultant baked goods. This was just aesthetic though (although not insignificant); the original purpose was to get the lower-protein southern wheat to somewhat function in northern-style yeast breads.

Like I said, I'm not an expert. I think I may have read this in one of the KAF manuals?

Other southern wheat breads, like classic southern biscuits and some of the cakes, are only really attainable with bleached soft wheat. Like good ole' White Lily. The cliche is that if you try to make a southern biscuit (in my family, this was known as just a "biscuit") with non-southern flour, you will get a hockey puck. I do recall my Mississippi father finding my Chicago mother's biscuits intolerable. He would pull out the dense interiors, and just eat buttered hot crust. At the time, I believe the family conclusion was that it was the altitude we were living in at the time (Colorado).

Edited February 22, 2016 by SLB (log)