Kneading Bread is Like Making a Shinto Sword

Reducing atmosphere (lots of hot CO) in the forge kept oxygen out of the steel.

Well, he had had lots of practice...

Also, in Samurai swords, the repeated hammering and folding really doesn't make for layers of alternating soft and hard steel; it just aligns the grain. The hard/soft distinction comes during the heat-treating phase of the completed blade; Google "hamon line". Getting the clays required is likely what took Hattori the full month.

Amazing what strictly empirical metallurgists could do.

Mark L. Fergerson

Well I did live in a city that had some excellent bakeries. Were it a matter of just walking to the corner, I might think differently. Here the nearest real bakery is 30 miles away over a congested causeway.

Every Walmart and food store in the area has a department with a sign on it proclaiming them a bakery, but that stuff they bake isn't bread in my opinion.

I bake three, sometimes four, times a week, and the results can compete with a real bakery. It is much cheaper than bakery fare and I can make what I want.

It is only trial and error to master the variables, there are plenty of recipes.

Good yeast, use enough, treat the little buggers with respect, use the right flour (all purpose - ain't) learn how your oven does things, develop the gluten (where most people fail - its got to have something like the consistency of loose chewing gum). The dough tells you all you need to know - its a matter listening to it. And the words "let rise until double in bulk," means just that, NOT 3X, 4X or 6X The yeast do their part once only, you have to move when they are ready.

Increase the sugar - decrease the baking temperature and bake longer.

Stick with an easy recipe until you become proficient at that one then apply and adapt the knowledge to others.

Cooking, Baking and Brewing are art forms. You wouldn't expect to learn a musical instrument in a few weeks.

I had a part time job cooking in high school. Large institutional kitchen and then small (200 diners) restaurant. I got along well with the chef so he took me with him when he changed jobs. His favorite saying was "You want to learn how to cook? Eat your mistakes. You'll learn."

He's right. Like any experiment you analyze the results and decide how and what to tweak.

"default" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Nah... okay, perhaps I slipped in extra zero. 100x then.

Baking 1 bread per day yourself, by trial and error, takes more than a lifetime to reach the quality of a good bakery. There's also a big difference between bread from a factory and the bread from a small bakery.

Really? I don't see it.

He said his bakery bread was a 1K X better than what YOU can achieve at home. That would say that his bakery is better than what I can achieve at home. I don't agree with that.

Maybe it should have been "..better than one can achieve at home." I assume that's how he probably intended it.

Over here the bakery is back after having been displaced by supermarkets. Most are Moroccan or Turkish with an emphasis on flat breads, the bread and other fare usually is fine and it's always fresh, with 3 or 4 bake runs daily, if you're lucky.

Thomas

The Dutch say "wat je kan" with "je" not specific to the person being talked to, but to a more generic, ephemeral "you".

Thomas

Perhaps you didn't see the photo I posted in abse of the bread I made at Thanksgiving. I'd put it up against any bread you buy from any bakery - they may do as well, but I'll bet they don't do any better. In addition, your loaf from the bakery doesn't make your house smell like heaven as it's cooking.

Learning to cook isn't hard, Frank, and if your cooking is 1000x worse than what you can get when you eat out, I highly recommend that you learn.

Unless you're in the UK, of course, in which case there's no point.

-- Mike --

Kneading Bread is NOT Like Making a Shinto Sword.

If you set out armed with even the stalest of garlic baguettes, and you pick a fight with ninja warrior, they're going to chop your legs off.

And when that happens, don't come running back here!

What, me, wrong? Not with this one, impossible! ;)

If you have a bakery you are happy with, by all means use it.

Odors can be deceiving, most cooks learn that. My Mom is the absolute worst cook in my limited experience. She'll start a chicken stock with too much water and boil it for hours (rolling boil - not simmered) - fills the house with a good odor, but all the delicate volatile compounds that should have remained in the broth are permeating the house - and the broth is like so much hot salted water.

I have a recipe for something called "Cuban Bread," from a book called ":The Supper of Lamb," by Robert Capon. The book isn't so much a cook book but one of cooking philosophy - my copy is gone but the recipe for Cuban Bread is still in the archives. It is what I recommend to people who have trouble baking bread. It isn't entirely foolproof but comes close.

Single rising and always has the most incredible crust - even with a home electric oven. I suspect the single rising gets rid of two of the stumbling blocks to the novice trying to produce good bread. It seems to be more tolerant of poor gluten development (which can be a flour, moisture or kneading problem) and timing the yeast just right, since any yeast has enough stamina to get through with one rising only.

The texture is coarser than double risen bread, but it adapts well to artisan ingredients - and convinces people (that have a few failures under their belt) they can produce good bread.

What piques my curiosity is why an inordinate number of electronics / electrical engineers seem to gravitate to "playing with their food." Baking Bread, Cooking, Making Sausage, Making Pickles, Brewing Beer and Wine . . . etc.

"Mike" schreef in bericht news:9CPnf.402$Bx.69@fed1read07...

they

I wouldn't mind send you a bread for comparison, but it takes 4-5 days to get it to the US, which is just too long.

than

My cooking is not too bad. But baking a good bread is about as difficult as building a good violin. Everbody can cut wood into a violin shape... It's also difficult to be good judge of your own baked bread, because the heavenly smell from the oven fools you ;) Take for instance French stick bread. You can buy copies of that bread everwhere in the world, but only the French bakers manage to reach that incredible taste and crispy crust.

I'm in the Netherlands.

Yeah. It should be really simple to copy and paste what's just above this, they just don't know to do it.

Hey, those of you on google groups! Copy some context, because with a real newsreader all we see is what you've typed into that stupid form

box.

Thanks, Rich

After reading the posts in this thread, I'm convinced most of them should stick to the bakery. The question isn't just why, it's "What the hell are they thinking?"

-- Mike --

"John Fields" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Pure arrogance of course ;)

You paint with a broad brush . . .

There are some bakeries that actually do things the same way you'd do them at home, but with dough mixers and real stone lined baking ovens. (something most homes lack). Lining a home oven with 50 pounds of brick, and preheating to 500 F for an hour is as close as one might come with an electric oven.

Those things in supermarkets that get their dough frozen in boxes - is that the "bakery" you refer to?

In my opinion the only thing lacking are the yeasts of yesteryear. The stuff I buy today lacks a character of its own - it is too neutral and it seems like all the suppliers are using the same bland strain.

Fortunately there are brewing suppliers that keep tasty strains alive. The initial cost is much higher, but its reasonably easy to farm yeast.

Brewing and Baking enjoy a kinship dating to c.4000 B.C.. The Metropolitan in NYC shows a pharaohs tomb with a miniature model of a brew, bake, and livestock building. The rooms were separated by dividers but shared a common roof and ventilation. I imagine the straw bedding of the animals provided all the airborne yeast they needed. In the middle ages beer was used to start bread, and visa versa. One drank water at one's own peril. I have a reprint of a book published in 1690 on the art of brewing that makes mention of baking as an associated skill.

If you like baking and drink beer, you'd probably love brewing. Why settle for American Pissner when one can have a home brew stout, porter or lager?