
Baking a Better Loaf of Bread - blue_devil
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/oct/10/flour-power-meet-the-bread-heads-baking-a-better-loaf
======
kop316
If home baking interests you, I have three suggestions:

\- Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish

\- The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart

\- The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion

Having never baked anything complex before, those books have been amazing in
learning how to bake. The bread is amazing and tastes as good as a small
bakery.

Ken Forkish also makes a book called "The Elements of Pizza" and shows you how
to make Italian, NY, and several over styles of pizza too. That in my opinion
is a must have book if you want to make Pizza.

~~~
resters
Going to read those, but meanhile, any tips on proofing that you can offer
here on HN?

~~~
throwaway8879
It took me somewhere around 10 tries until I baked my first perfect bread. My
overall advice would be to knead really well, unless you're doing a no-knead
bread. As to your question about proofing, be gentle, let it rest in a warm
spot for a fair length of time - but not too long so as to let it collapse. A
lot of this will depend on the weather where you are.

~~~
tasuki
I've baked no-knead bread before and I'm still confused - what exactly is the
difference between bread that requires kneading and bread that doesn't require
it?

~~~
MegaDeKay
The hallmarks of a no knead bread are primarily small amounts of yeast, long
proofs, and high hydration. It is possible to convert one recipe to another,
but you won't necessarily end up with the same result. For example, no knead
develops its own gluten network as it rises, but the dough won't have the same
strength as kneading five or ten minutes by hand will. So don't expect a nice
tall sandwich bread out of a no knead recipe.

~~~
tasuki
Thank you!

------
girzel
I knew I'd fallen down the rabbit hole when my dad and I started going in on
50lb sacks of wheat berries from Eastern Washington (I'm in Seattle). I can't
remember, I think it's like 20 or 30 dollars a sack. I have a mill attachment
for a KitchenAid, it's not awesome but it does the trick. My dad bakes 100%
ground berries (so completely whole-wheat, by definition), but I mix it with
bread flour -- using whole wheat to feed the sourdough starter.

It produces an absolutely incredible flavor. If you give it a slow proof and
bake in a cast iron dutch oven, you get these amazing cinnamon and nut smells
as it bakes. Just the most delicious bread.

~~~
chris_st
Do you do anything to increase the gluten? When I've tried whole-wheat bread,
it just kind of falls apart when sliced. I've tried adding "Vital Wheat
Gluten", but even a tablespoon to a loaf didn't seem to help. Thanks!

~~~
girzel
I think home-ground whole-wheat flour has to have more gluten than pretty much
any other flour out there...

Are you putting a whole bunch of other stuff in there? There's a reason fat is
called "shortening" \-- it breaks the gluten strands, and makes the bread
crumbly. Unless you're putting a whole bunch of butter or some other fat into
the flour, I can't imagine why it would be crumbly.

What are your ingredients?

~~~
taejo
Whole-wheat flour has everything that white flour has (including gluten), plus
more. If you remove the "more", the proportion of gluten in the whole goes
_up_.

The "more" also includes fat, as well as other things which might interfere
with gluten formation.

------
hn_throwaway_99
One thing I love about France. Delicious bread is _everywhere_. Even the
corner convenience store sells a wider variety and tastier selection of fresh
bread than many grocery stores in the US.

~~~
wiredfool
I’ve been in France for a couple of months now, and I’ve found _one_ loaf that
was up there with what I could get in a supermarket in Seattle, from essential
baking or grand central.

There’s a lot of indifferent baguettes, and other basically white bread
country loafs.

~~~
wikibob
Where are you shopping? Proper indépendant boulangeries? Or Carrefour and
Auchan?

~~~
wiredfool
Independent, 3 towns/4 bakeries, + SuperU, e-Leclerc, Carrefour once, and one
Artisan bakery in Paris.

The one in Paris was by far the best, but it was bio levian and a pain
complet. So that was kind of not fair to the others, but it's the only one
that had a real depth of flavor. They were excellent loaves, and I wish I
could have had more. (but I only walked past it once, and there's only so much
bread you can eat before it goes stale)

Second best has been a Leclerc, surprisingly good. Good crackly crispy crust,
good structure in the center. Nice mix of lacy holes and structure. Not just a
fluffy almost pain de mie with a leathery crust.

Third best has been another one of the big supermarkets, probably SuperU. They
have a coupage or something like that that is probably a very high hydration
that's made into a sheet, then cut lengthwise into baguette shapes.

The independent bakeries all seem to have pretty much the same baguettes,
they're not great, better than your average store bought bread, but the crumb
and structure are far too uniform to be anything other than a mass process.

It's almost as if they're getting the same flour and have pretty much the same
process and equipment. Yeah, it's good compared to plastic bagged sliced
bread, but I'm comparing it to what I've made and eaten, and I've seen better.

~~~
chupy
This reminds me of Brussels, a lot of "independent" bakeries basically get
either frozen or already baked bread delivered early morning from somewhere
else, probably a big bakery that exists on the outskirts of the city that does
industrial size quantities.

------
blue_devil
Here're a couple videos about Prof Wolfe's method:

Wheat Populations at Wakelyns Agroforestry Farm
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDV_tLmeeFE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDV_tLmeeFE)

The story of Wakelyns Agroforestry
[https://vimeo.com/256082580](https://vimeo.com/256082580)

------
chadcmulligan
A question one of you bread fans may be able to answer. My daughter has what
we thought was a gluten intolerance, she recently went to Italy though and can
eat their bread and pasta fine. Coming back to Australia, and eating bread
here - same reaction, she's found a deli that imports Italian bread and can
eat that. I've looked at the ingredients list and nothing leaps out, one thing
I was thinking maybe the wheat is different and so the Gluten is a slightly
different shape maybe, any of you folk know what the difference could be?

~~~
ReptileMan
FODMAPS - olygoscharids that are very hard to digest. Proper fermentation
reduces them. I guess the italian bread is just properly fermented and
leavened.

Here is fun experiment - try her tolerance towards the simplest no knead bread
made at home with long cold proofing. Like 48-72 hours. Or good proper
artisanal sourdough - if she can tolerate them better you have a good piece of
the puzzle.

And pasta gluten is quite different anyway from the bread one. It is made from
durum wheat which is very hard and I think its gluten lacked the elasticity of
the bread one.

Does she likes eats a lot fermented foods - like sourkraut and real yogurt?
They have been shown to help with stomach microbiome.

~~~
chadcmulligan
> Does she likes eats a lot fermented foods - like sourkraut and real yogurt?
> They have been shown to help with stomach microbiome.

Sometimes, might be time to investigate these to, thanks

Edit: on the sourdough front there is some strange results, I tried an
artisanal organic sourdough from a bakery that takes their bread very
seriously, and she reacts to that (however, I really like it, so a bit of a
bonus for me there :-) ), strangely there is a rye sourdough she gets from the
supermarket and she can eat that fine. Its a puzzling set of reactions.
Howvever, the good news is its not gluten its something else that can be
isolated.

------
sm4rk0
As a hacker, I especially like this project:
[https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-
code](https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code)

------
downtide
Due to a broken oven, I've ended up using a breadmaker, and although the
results are middle of the road, the simplicity of making a loaf is super. Just
throw in the ingredients, set timer, wake to the smell of cooking bread. The
kneading is a bit weedy and I get better results by hand. But the breadmaker
makes no mess at all.

~~~
dev_dull
I think the bread maker was ahead of its time.

------
viburnum
I really enjoyed this article. I remember reading about the WSU Bread Lab etc
a few years ago and it was great to get an update. Here are two older articles
about bread that I really liked (both feature the Bread Lab):

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/bread-is-
broken....](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/bread-is-broken.html)

Here's a quote that explains what the deal is with the whole wheat bread you
can buy in America:

 _A grain of wheat has three main components: a fibrous and nutrient-rich
outer coating called the bran; the flavorful and aromatic germ, a living
embryo that eventually develops into the adult plant; and a pouch of starch
known as the endosperm, which makes up the bulk of the grain. Before roller
mills, all three parts were mashed together when processed. As a result, flour
was not the inert white powder most of us are familiar with today; it was
pungent, golden and speckled, because of fragrant oils released from the
living germ and bits of hardy bran. If freshly ground flour was not used
within a few weeks, however, the oils turned it rancid._

 _Roller mills solved this problem. Their immense spinning cylinders denuded
the endosperm and discarded the germ and bran, producing virtually unspoilable
alabaster flour composed entirely of endosperm. It was a boon for the growing
flour industry: Mills could now source wheat from all over, blend it to
achieve consistency and transport it across the nation without worrying about
shelf life. That newfound durability came at a huge cost, however, sacrificing
much of the grain’s flavor and nutrition. In the 1940s, to compensate for
these nutritional deficiencies, flour producers started fortifying white flour
with iron and B vitamins, a ubiquitous practice today. The rise of roller
milling and bread factories also put pressure on plant breeders to make wheat
even more amenable to the new dominant technologies; whiteness, hardness and
uniformity took precedence over flavor, nutrition and novelty._

 _Today, whole-wheat flour accounts for only 6 percent of all flour produced
in the United States. And most whole-wheat products sold in supermarkets are
made from roller-milled flour with the germ and bran added back in._

------
maxnoe
As a German, this deeply irritates me. People have not eaten proper bread
since "generations"?

WTF?

~~~
mosselman
I love German bread. Whenever we are in Germany we load up on all sorts of
great loads and freeze them at home. I am from the Netherlands where the bread
it generally fine, but boring. German bread is much more refined and
outspoken.

------
mrob
I dislike these trendy breads. They have excessively hard crusts and large
holes, both of which I consider defects. My favorite bread is made with low
hydration dough (50% water by baker's percentage, i.e. percent of flour
weight) for a dense crumb, and cooked by steaming for an extra-soft crust. The
trendy recipes also have too much salt, which masks the flavor of the
fermentation products. IMO 1% salt by baker's percentage is sufficient.
Sourdough is helpful for adding flavor to wholegrain or non-wheat breads, but
for standard white bread I find it never develops much sourness, and long
proofing with standard dried yeast is just as good.

Try experimenting with recipes yourself instead of just copying what's
popular. I think a lot of bread recipes are designed to make good looking
bread, rather than bread that's enjoyable to eat.

~~~
Pfhreak
> They have excessively hard crusts and large holes, both of which I consider
> defects.

I can't disagree with this enough. Gimme that hard, crispy crust with a good
ear. And lots of good holes.

Although, my crumb always ends up even and fairly dense. No clue what to
change to open it up. (Even with 70%+ hydration).

~~~
Tarrosion
Most likely cause of a dense crumb is underproofing, though a too-cold oven
won't help either.

The most likely cause of a tight (but not dense) crumb is knocking too much
air out during shaping. You can try varying the ratio of bulk ferment time to
proofing time and see if that helps as well.

~~~
Pfhreak
> The most likely cause of a tight (but not dense) crumb is knocking too much
> air out during shaping.

I'm certain this is it. I worked as a baker for a few years, but I was making
bagels. So my feel for dough is all based on that dough. Very different stuff.

------
dev_dull
Using bread flour really is one of those things that’s easy to miss but often
times discourages first time bakers. The gluten makes a HUGE difference in the
crumb and mouthfeel.

Also tip for other busy bakers like myself that don’t want to keep two types
of flour stocked. Keep some vital wheat gluten in the freezer and throw in a
teaspoon or two with each cup of AP flour. Instant bread flour!

~~~
sircastor
I've been baking breads regularly for the better part of a decade, and I just
learned about Vital wheat Gluten this last year. I was blown away. What an
incredibly useful tool!

------
bluedino
This is a great recipe to start out with if you'd like to start making your
own bread:

[https://artisanbreadinfive.com/2013/10/22/the-new-artisan-
br...](https://artisanbreadinfive.com/2013/10/22/the-new-artisan-bread-in-
five-minutes-a-day-is-launched-back-to-basics-updated/)

------
droithomme
Just make this 3x a week.

[https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-
bread](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread)

Once you get it down, you can make it more fancy by adding other things.

Yeah, store bought breads are terrible with all the weird crap.

Fantastic, delicious, nutritious, satisfying, world-class bread is incredibly
simple and easy to make. If your book's recipe is complex and hard to follow,
throw it out. They are a poser.

Good bread doesn't last long though and has no shelf duration. But it doesn't
have to because it will all be eaten quickly. Store bread is entirely about
long term storage of something never intended to be stored more than a day.
Given those constraints it is what it is.

~~~
smcameron
I've tried this a few times. Twice, it come out great, and once it failed (I
think temp was too cold and it didn't rise quite enough.)

All three times, I made a huge mess. The dry flour goes everywhere, the dough
is _very_ sticky and gets on my hands and spoon and the towel and plastic wrap
the recipe has you using. If I could figure out how to not make a huge mess,
it would be 100x more convenient to make.

~~~
MegaDeKay
This is the process I use in making no knead bread. Lots of pictures and
minimal minimal mess.

[http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.com/2014/06/diablo-bread-
br...](http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.com/2014/06/diablo-bread-bread-of-
devil.html)

But note that no-knead bread is supposed to be sticky. The high hydration is
the trick to making the whole thing work, but good technique can reduce the
mess to a minimum.

If you are getting inconsistent results, I strongly recommend you weigh your
ingredients (especially flour) if you aren't already. There is a huge
variation in how much flour is in a cup, and you can swing between delicious
to disaster pretty easily. I feel that weighing of ingredients when baking is
a key to consistency.

------
Animats
Artisanal bread making. How it's _really_ done.[1] Note how much takes place
before baking.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qm_iHgFsPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qm_iHgFsPw)

------
WomanCanCode
This article reminds me of a documentary on Netflix about how we prefer to
grow surpluses of lower quality wheat crops in the US that has higher yield
output. I wonder if we will ever go back to quality as oppose to quantity ….

------
mark_l_watson
Sometimes the health food stores in town have whole wheat flat bread with just
whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, water. I can imagine my distant ancestors
eating it and feeling right at home with it.

I am supposed to watch the glycemic index of food I eat so eating a small
amount of dense whole wheat flat bread works for me. I also sometimes make
pizza crust from riced fresh cauliflower and avoid the wheat altogether.

I really like the advice given in the article about only eating what our great
grandmothers would recognize as food.

------
tmikaeld
Actually tried making sourdough bread at home, the taste and texture
eventually became so superior that we don't want to buy bread in the store any
more.

Sure, there are "sourdough" bread in the store, but they always add ordinary
yeast to speed up the process, tastes nothing near the real thing.

There did open a new sourdough bakery in the city that does it correctly,
however, a single loaf cost 7€.

~~~
tunnuz
Same same, my partner got me a sourdough book in april, I have baked maybe 30
loaves since then. I got to a level of quality that there is no reason to buy
bread anymore and it feels that store bought bread is not great when we do.

~~~
tmikaeld
I think we're at a similar number, I don't remember when we started but it was
around the same time.

We also tried different types of flour, at first we used ordinary flour but it
didn't taste right (bad fermentation too).

Now we use whole-grain for the fermentation stages and then a mixture of
stone-milled flour and a little whole-grain during the baking process. Going
from ordinary to organic flour also made a difference, especially with the
fermentation reaction. We have gotten a few bugs in the flour though, but it's
kind of expected, especially on the stone-milled types.

------
senectus1
Its all about the flour.

I'm Australian I recently went through south America for work and was
_shocked_ at the poor quality bread products in that country. It turns out
their bread has a really poor gluten quality, makes a huge diff to the mouth
feel and eat-ability of the bread.

------
geden
By bizarre coincidence I bumped into my neighbours yesterday, they’d just
arrived back from Tuxford Mill after reading the Guardian article. We live
only 15 mins away.

I’ve been buying Tuxford Mill porridge oats from for a few years. Going to try
my hand at sourdough now!

------
GordonS
Random thought - I like to bake cakes with the kids, so I always have flour in
the cupboard, but seldom yeast.

I've looked, but even flatbread recipes I've found seem to include yeast - is
there such a thing as bread _without_ yeast?

~~~
chadcmulligan
There's a classic Australian bread - Damper that's made without Yeast, it just
uses self raising flour as a raising agent.
[https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/damper/80391c40-8eab-4e67-9...](https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/damper/80391c40-8eab-4e67-9cfc-0c802f9fb7a1)
Its great to make when camping

~~~
betterbeehome
I find damper hard to digest compared to normal bread.

------
ip26
_Quite often, I find a couple of thick slices, spread with a generous swathe
of butter, a satisfying lunch._

Who _are_ these people? I would be hungry again within ten minutes. (BMI of
~19)

~~~
yhager
It's sourdough bread. It's way more filling then your average supermarket-
bought white.

~~~
ip26
I bake my own. A quarter loaf might serve as an appetizer.

------
simonebrunozzi
Book suggestions are great, but I have a more compelling question for all of
you: where to get absolutely amazing flour (in the US)?

------
grumpydba
How to bake a better loaf:
[https://youtu.be/8B_7AFYmkYo](https://youtu.be/8B_7AFYmkYo)

------
p1mrx
I wouldn't mind having good bread from time to time, but a loaf is well over
1000 calories, and it goes stale before I have time to eat that much. Frozen
bread is difficult to cut, and even pre-sliced frozen bread is a pain to tear
apart.

Somebody should make good bread that's pre-sliced into several chunks, with
sheets of (e.g.) wax paper dividing them. Each loaf could also include a small
resealable bag, so you always have a convenient container for the current non-
frozen chunk.

------
bluedino
I love baking bread, but it's hard to argue with the $2.99 loaf from La Brea
in the "bakery" at the local Kroger.

------
rayiner
> Wholegrain, sourdough bread is a very different beast; crunchy, crusty,
> chewy, with a complex taste that is rich, nutty and tangy. Quite often, I
> find a couple of thick slices, spread with a generous swathe of butter, a
> satisfying lunch.

What sanctimony! For my part, I recently discovered Trader Joe’s Canadian
White bread. Such a revelation after being subjected to modern bread filling
with random seeds and whatnot. Seeds are for birds!

~~~
icebraining
You should be careful about letting a reasonable aversion to hipsterism become
a tic. There's nothing sanctimonious about finding wholegrain sourdough bread
tasty and processed bread flavorless (and it is; there's a reason the bread
you buy has honey, vinegar, buttermilk and a bunch of other ingredients).

~~~
rayiner
The preference is not inherently sanctimonious, though it is in the
minority—over 80% of bread sales are white bread. But the article was
certainly written in a sanctimonious. Asserting “my politics are better and
the bread I like is tastier” is certainly sanctimonious. (Either one standing
alone would be fine.)

