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

[venta]

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.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

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.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

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.)

I suspect that, like me

[a-llusive.livejournal.com]

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.