venta | From what you are made: sugar and spice and all things nice

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From what you are made: sugar and spice and all things nice

So, about this one new skill per month idea.

April, as you know, didn't start well. Since then I've been away a lot, so it hasn't so much gone badly as not really gone at all.

In the past fortnight, I've managed one batch of bread and one batch of cinnamon buns. And even thought I wasn't expecting to get to the end of the month and think well, brilliant, I'm now a master baker I was hoping for something a bit more impressive.

My bread was - again - "all right". I took one batch of buns out of the oven a tad early (they're cooked, but anaemic-looking) and, though the second batch looked more healthy, they still weren't great. They seemed a little doughy and solid - does anyone know what might be the main cause of this ? I noted after the fact that my mum's recipe called for rather more yeast-per-pound-of-flour than the one I used - might increasing the yeast help ?

The cinnamon bun manufacture was a series of disasters. The first one

bopeepsheep warned me about: the quantity of flour in the recipe was woefully inadequate. The second I fell into because I decided that (without greater experience) I should follow the recipe exactly; something I'm very bad at doing ordinarily. Accordingly, I simply mixed my fresh yeast in with the flour then added the liquid. What I wanted to do was warm up the milk and dissolve the yeast and sugar in it before adding to the flour. I think this would have been a much better way to go.

(I suspect yeast issues caused the dough not to rise much during proving, then rise massively and uncontrollably while actually in the oven. Never mind, I enjoy cleaning burnt sugar off enamelwork. And I wasn't at all worried when the oven slightly caught fire. Oh no.)

April has given way to May which means I have a new quest, but I still have an imperial shitload of fresh yeast to use up post-haste so will attempt to continue in the bready products vein. The mother has dispatched what she claims is a simple recipe for tea-cakes, and I'm hoping I can improve on the bread.

(The finished buns. Which despite the disasters, and the middle ones being a little undercooked, actually tasted OK. Photograph, flour-pouring assistance and consolation in the face of disaster courtesy of

leathellin.)

All and any advice welcome from those with bakery skills.

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Baking is an arcane art which man (or at least girl with vaguely tomboyish tendencies) was not meant to wot of. If you wanted to know hot to make the perfect roast dinner, or what to do with too many aubergines, I'm your girl. But baking? Magic.

I might hold you to that - improving my roast dinner skills is on the list for later in the year!

(I'm all right roasting vegetables, but I very rarely roast big lumps o' meat, which means I always have to look up cooking times and worry whether everything will be ready at the same time and such.)

Ask

narenek for a loan of his Big Scary Meat Book (ok, it's the River Cottage Meat Book really).

Disclosure: I vigorously disagree with Hugh F-W on cooking and resting times, but only because I really really dislike rare meat (and it dislikes me); with a good working oven and people who can digest a decent roast, I suspect it is sound scientific process.

Sadly, our oven is insane. I have what I consider to be the standard cooking reference for everything (Maguerite Patten's Everyday Cookery) which has lots of tables of cooking and resting times and things. I can look 'em up.

What I don't have is any natural feeling for the job, or any learned basis of wisdom on which to do it. I don't really want to have to faff around with timetables every time I do a roast - I suspect it's really just practise.

Ah, the reason I recommend reading Hugh F-W is that he actually has a huge chapter of why before the very short table of times. I think reading that does help. (Our oven is also insane and coupled with my dislike of rare meat it means we somewhat disregard his timings, but the general principles of his method are useful.)

you need an oven thermometer so you can compensate for its erratic behaviour.
You can only get used to an oven if it's consistently about its errors.

what to do with too many aubergines
You make it sound like you have this problem a lot.

They look good! I reckon the same recipe can be used for chelsea buns - subbing currants for cinnamon, of course - although I haven't yet tried it.

I think you're right with the yeast/milk/sugar idea - I'm using dried (and the breadmaker to mix) and I definitely got better results when I mixed egg/yeast/sugar/milk and let it sit for a bit rather than just tipping everything in. Hmmm. Now I feel like baking again...

I'm not big on currants myself (though a connosseiur of such things reports that I make the best Eccles cakes ever); think I'll stick with cinnamon :)

I'm definitely going to try doing my own thing with the yeast next time (and even with the disasters they were sufficiently yummy that there will be a next time - thanks for the tip!)

Try sultanas instead. They're much nicer!

Are you using live fresh yeast (the runny stuff), or freeze-dried fresh yeast (the powdered stuff)? Live yeast is apparently quite easy to work with once you have the knack, and of course has the advantage that it breeds enthusiastically when you're not looking, but the crucial difference is that it uses different recipes to easy-cook freeze-dried yeast. So it's vitally important to know what kind of yeast the recipe is talking about or your bread dies.

I've always cooked with the freeze-dried stuff, which is pretty simple to work. The only issue is that these days it's not always easy to find a warm enough place to let the dough rise. Agas and airing cupboards are woefully thin on the ground.

Um, neither. I'm using the only kind of fresh yeast I'm familiar with: the non-breeding brick kind, which is approximately the colour of modelling clay and the consistency of, er, modelling clay.

Hang on, I think I might see where I've been going wrong...

That stuff is, if I remember correctly, preserved live yeast. What you do with it is mix a little of it in a cup of warm sugary water, leave it for a while, and it starts frothing madly and turns into live live yeast. I've used it once, but someone else was driving and I was just following instructions.

Personally, I find that freeze-dried ('easy bake') yeast is far easier to work with, and with the popularity of bread machines, is suddenly very cheap. OTOH I would like to learn how to work live yeast, mainly because it's cool (and even cheaper; it used to be that you could get jugs of the stuff for free at your local bakery because they had so much of it)...

OK: from the descriptions in cookbooks, the brick kind is what they're expecting you to use. I know that you mix is with warm liquid and sugar, but it seems Nigella doesn't and I thought she just might know what she was talking about.

Personally, I find that freeze-dried ('easy bake') yeast is far easier to work with

... but makes the bread taste nastier. At least, I find it does.

I don't know anything about proper baking, but messing around with our breadmaker suggests that either of two things make bread too solid/dense/heavy:

1) Not enough yeast. And this varies not only with the size of loaf, but also (massively) with the type of flour. Wholemeal flour needs a lot of persuading to rise. Indeed, I once discussed this with Pam (at Tao) who apparently comes from a family of professional bakers. According to her it's common practice in the bakery business to slip a small quantity of white flour into even wholemeal loaves to make them come out nice.

2) Too much liquid (water, in the recipes I use). If the mixture's too wet it doesn't rise well. That said, if you're not using a breadmaker you probably notice this at the kneading stage.

PS. Have you noticed the BBC have a big picture of you here? (Click through the slides...)

Ooh, I had not. I went looking for Mayday photos on the BBC yesterday, but they were all "People jump off bridge! Aaargh!"

Thanks for pointing it out. I'm slightly worried that they've captioned us as if we were a pub!

Either that or you're very very keen for breakfast.

If you're using a breadmaker, they frequently prompt you to add half a vitamin C tablet if you're using wholemeal flour to boost the yeast a bit.

However, be very careful with breadmaker recipes --- they frequently suck. Mine suggests using one tbsp of sugar in a small loaf. It works, but it tastes like cake. I think it's a typo for tsp.

Salt is vital, and not just for flavouring. It makes the gluten gel. Put in too little salt, and your bread will die. Put in too much, and the yeast will die. Don't put the little pile of freeze-dried yeast on top of the little pile of salt...

BTW, you may be interested to know that my icon is a picture of a loaf of particularly fine (if slightly disturbing) curry bread I made once. And marmalade.

I remember it well :)

Mine suggests using one tbsp of sugar in a small loaf. It works, but it tastes like cake. I think it's a typo for tsp.

Weird! I'd love to know how you get that effect. I always add around 1 tablespoon of sugar and have yet to get anything cakey out of the other end.

(And yes, all the wholemeal recipes I use do have vitamin C in them... but my comment above is with that already included. I think if you missed it out you might get dwarf bread!)

Yup, I was really surprised when the breadmaker (which

hendybear brought to live with us for a little while) suggested we make bread with all wholemeal flour. The home-made bread in various households when I was little was always brown/wholemeal, but always had at least some white flour in it.

1) Really? Thank you, I think you may have just debugged my bread making. I used to be really good at bread as a teenager, when I used white flour, but now I have developed a taste for wholemeal bread I mysteriously appear to have become rubbish.

Fingers crossed for your next loaf, then! I generally make 75% wholemeal these days, which comes out about the same as commercial wholemeal in terms of density and texture.

Block yeast - cream it with the sugar, add the liquid (?milk) at blood heat and put in a warm place to "sponge" i.e. begin to heave and bubble a bit. The pour into well in middle of (preferably) slightly warmed flour/salt, spiced with any fat rubbed in.

Well yes, that's what I was expecting. I just thought I'd follow the recipe!

of your undried yeast :)

Sainsbury's, on the ring road. Or was it Tesco ? I can't remember off hand. They don't display it on the shelves, but if you go up to the in-store bakery bit (in any supermarket that has one) and ask, they'll furnish you with yeast.

The manner of furnishing varies - it might be free, it might be a variable quantity, it might be a chuffing huge block. See here (http://venta.livejournal.com/307170.html#cutid2) for my experiences!

If its cinnamon buns you're doing I can get an ace receipe off Erichs daughter..

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From what you are made: sugar and spice and all things nice

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I suspect that, like me

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Do let me know where you're getting hold

Re: Do let me know where you're getting hold

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