Kneading Bread is Like Making a Shinto Sword

I see where you went wrong! You didn't...

Do again

Do again

;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |

Fresh-made bread is the _most_ wonderful thing!

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |

You have already mixed up the ingredients... including the yeast.

In order for your yeast to go yum yum on what it might find it needs some oxygen to eat it and convert things to carbon dioxide plus babys.

Kneading introduces the atmosphere(with oxygen) to your dough.

Be wise with your kneading.

Flatten and smear with the palms of you hands into a flat thing.

Fold in half.

Do again

Do again

Each time you do it you double the number of layers and each layer has some air in it.

Get Fixated about it.....

10 times later you have 1024 layers of air in your dough.

20 times later you have 1,048,576 layers of air in your dough.

See, you don't have to kill yourself over this kneading thing you just have to do it right.......

The Shinto Way!!!!!!

DNA

I love my bread machine and I am not even american. :-p

some

have

Plus, I assume this is right, If you slop your dough into the tray and make some artistic cuts on it before slagging it into the oven then it will look pretty when it comes out....

DNA

some

have

Ha Ha Ha

Fuck off old bloke.

I am now eating freshly made.... oh shit..... soggy bread with a nice crusty top...

DNA

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that modern steel alloys and forging procedures can produce swords exceeding the quality of the ancient methods. Maybe I'm just thinking of Damascus steel, since those were supposed to be mass-produced and I don't think any folding was happening. As far as the benefits of folding, I had thought it was supposed to combine the hardness (edge-keeping ability) with flexibilty (resistance to breakage). It still seems that these days we can do pretty well with certain alloys. I remember not too long ago there was some kind of plasma-based surface treatment, made the surface three times harder than normal steel? Or maybe synthetic diamond fused along the edge and honed down to an almost monomolecular edge over a few years using a scanning tunneling microscope. That would be pretty sharp.

I tried a machine and ended up getting rid of it in favor of hand made. The only good thing about it was smelling baking bread early in the morning . . .

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Ditto that. A lot of people tend to want to treat the little beasties as just another ingredient.

Treat the yeast well, and it will treat you well.

For beer I start the yeast at 5 AM with my coffee. Boil the starter wort, let it cool, pitch the yeast into the starter set it aside. At

6-7 PM I pitch the yeast into the fermenter.

Some of the spent grain makes a wonderful addition to bread - crushed malted barley and adjuncts (without hops). If you don't make beer, you can get crushed barley (ask for crushed crystal malt - tastes better) at a beer supply store. Or crushed dark patent malt, or chocolate malt for color and a roasted flavor. Steep the grains in water at ~160 F for an hour or longer before adding to the dough.

Used to be able to get yeast at Sam's - 2 kilos for $4 now it is 2 pounds for $3 . . . 25 pound sack of bread flour is up too. ~$10.

Lot of foodstuffs are up 20% this past year - most of that in the last three months.

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I find that mixing 5 gram yeast with 100 gram flour and about 50-100 gram water - it should be a sticky, stringy mess when mixed but not stick to the bowl - and leaving that to ferment for 6 hours (or 24 hours in the fridge) before adding it to the rest of the dough makes the bread much fluffier and nicer.

On 12/12/2005 the venerable Frithiof Andreas Jensen etched in runes:

I do that too, but always try to use fresh yeast as I can get small amounts from the back door of the island bakery. It makes all the difference.

Kneading should take no less than 10 minutes. It's not only about getting lots of air through the dough but also breaking down the gluten in the flour. Not enough kneading and the bread will be hard.

Here's a recipe that I tried last week. It's great with some good strong cheese and a pint of best ale.

4oz medium oatmeal 1/2pt milk 1oz fresh yeast (2tsp dried yeast will do) 1/4pt hand hot water 10oz wholewheat flour 10oz strong white flour 1tbs salt 1tsp honey 2oz butter 1tsp sugar

Combine the oatmeal and milk and leave to soak for 4-5 hours.

Start the yeast in the water and sugar.

Mix dry ingredients in a warm bowl. Melt the butter and honey together in a small pan and pour into the centre of the dry mix, add the yeast and finally the soaked oatmeal mixture. Make the dough and knead for 10 minutes. After dough has doubled in size knock back and make two loaves.

Once loaves have risen again, bake at 450F/230C for 10 mins then reduce heat to 350F/180C for a further 30 minutes.

Enjoy.

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John B

Think I'll stick to bread making... Tried forge welding a few times - the process that you referred to in folding over the metal, hammering it flat again while yellow hot. Hot flux sprays all over and if you don't do it *exactly* right, the metal doesn't fuse together properly. The flux is used to keep oxygen *out* of the joint in this case. Even in an induction furnace where you don't have to worry quite as much about oxidation (which impedes bonding), it is still tricky. Can't imagine how difficult it was for the sword makers of old working over coal fires to make these exquisite swords. In the movie 'Kill Bill' where Hantori says that it will take a month to make the sword, even for a master sword maker, that seemed a short time considering all the work involved.

The Damascus steel was produced with alternating layers of high carbon and low carbon steel forge welded toghther, folded and re-welded many times. High carbon steel makes for keen edges but is very brittle and breaks easily. Low carbon is resillient but won't hold an edge. I believe that the idea was the even when you chipped the edge, the layered structure that was exposed still kept a keen cutting edge.

Modern alloys and production methods can do amazing things. I trained though as a historical interperter in an 1800 museum as a blacksmith apprentice. Working over a coal fired forge is quite a challenge compared to modern methods.

Probably good for me to re-read Alex Bealer's book "The Art of Blacksmithing" again. It's been a while and that was an excellent text on historical iron working. ($10 at Amazon.com)

"Frithiof Andreas Jensen" schreef in bericht news:dnjj1c$jpc$ snipped-for-privacy@news.al.sw.ericsson.se...

the

and

I find that the bread from the local bakery here is 1000x better than what you can achieve at home. A 5-minute 'how to bake bread' tutorial is not the same as years and years of experience...

Also, supermarket flour isn't very good quality.

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Thanks, Frank.
(remove \'q\' and \'.invalid\' when replying by email)

Gold leaf is made sort of the same way. A little blob of gold is sandwiched between folded leather sheets and hammered until it's not many atoms thick.

John

But that doesn't get your fingernails clean!

Best of Luck - Mike 61/2

Shouldn't that be "I find that the bread from the local bakery here is

1000x better than what I can achieve at home."

Unless you're very old, there's still hope.

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Gold leaf on Bananas Foster? I'll have to try that.

John

"cbm5" yawned and yelled at the speech recognition programme...

I just wander over to the bakery (just over there ==> about 100 m) and get a thick sliced granary, meself . . . . .

8¬ )

_______ Geoff B