I hardly use a recipe for bread any longer: cup and a half of warm water, 3 glugs of olive oil (from a liquor dispenser), 50 cent sized center of your palm of salt crystals (sea), then 4 cups sifted flour, a big pour of wheat bran, and 2 tsp of yeast. Only two things are critical to be exact: the water—and the flour. I have a mortally hard time sifting flour without having it all over the kitchen, so I have to set the sifter down and avoid compacting the flour, which screws the measure.
It must’ve sat too hard. The resulting mix was a brick. I saw it not forming a ball, tested the consistency, and the cure for brick is, yes, a tablespoon more water, but this was really a brick: add 2.
Well, I was right the first time. I added too much water. It’s tricksy to do it visually. Mixing was turning up a slop. So…the cure for slop is a big dash of flour. I did.
I think I finally got it right. A cautious poke proved less bricklike. It looked normal. We’ll see what bakes up.
Meanwhile the h key on this keyboard has something under it—quel pain!—requiring many retypes to get it right. And I can’t find the little tube that focuses the canned air cleaner. I’m going to have to get some sewing thread to get it dislodged.
OMG! Never measure flour by volume! Weigh it – anything else will have you off by as much as 25%. Side benefit, you don’t have to worry about measuring sifted volume, you can just sift in portions after weighing.
1 cup flour is about 4.5 oz, or about 125g. Sifted will be less…
Internet says 4 oz per sifted cup—but it also says it varies by type. So wheat or rye weighs that. I use various types of flour. What keeps one out of trouble is that little template in the skull that knows what the dough should feel like…if it isn’t silky at kneading, there’s a problem—but I wonder if there’s something that both sifts and measures. I hate how the flour flies about and gets on the counters.
Update: the second intervention got it. It’s a bigger loaf than usual, but it’s risen nicely and unless it sinks during baking, it’s going to be ok. I like your idea, though, Carson G, and I’m going to look either to weigh out a pound of flour (4x4oz) or find a sifter that will contain it. Target has one that supposedly contains it in a measured cup. I bake about every 5 days, so I’m going to try the by-weight-only method and see how that works for me.
You would think after as many centuries as mankind has been doing this operation, ie, trying to ascertain exactly and precisely how much flour is going into a mix, that someone would have come up with a neat, contained technological way to do this one basic kitchen job. Flour weight varies with type, brand, humidity, etc, and while the variance is pretty small, it’s a question, still.
Bread is very, very forgiving. I’ve been baking it regularly for about, wow, 25 years and have done up a self-published cookbook, Bread UnBound: A Relaxed Bread and Sourdough Cookbook. At this point, I rarely weigh or measure any flour or liquid and rely mostly on texture. You’re right that a brick-hard dough is not going to be happy. In fact, my fairly recent conclusion (in the 25 year course of things) is that the slacker (moister) the dough, the better rise you are likely to have so I am now incredibly liberal with liquid. When I screw up once in a while and get an unrising lump of dough, it’s generally because I’ve killed off the yeast in it somehow. But, having switched almost exclusively to using my sourdough starter rather than commercial, dry yeast, that is generally not a problem now. It’s much harder to kill off all the yeasties spread through 2+ cups of starter rather than a scant tablespoon warming back to life in a bit of water.
I’ve never weighed flour in making bread, but I only sift it if the recipe calls for sifting. The bread turns out fine.
I seem to be developing a feel for making pizza dough, at least, but I keep getting it too wet or too dry, and have to adjust with water and flour. And each time so far, I’ve probably used too much yeast, a whole envelope / sachet / single packet. Like the approach to making pork chop gravy, which my dad taught me as a young teen, I’m going less by recipe and more by feel or eye, with each attempt. I have a feeling I’m using just a tad more of several ingredients than needed, but by the time I’ve added more water and flour, it evens out.
I have *not* gotten brave enough to throw (spin) the pizza dough into a flat, circular crust. I think that’ll take an effort of real will and faith!
I thought, this last time, that I’d wind up with too thin a crust, but no, they were much thicker, baked up with goodies piled on, than I expected. So, I’m still very new at it. I’ve had great fun learning how to make homemade pizza, though, and I really thank you, CJ, and other friends who’ve given pizza-making advice.
Hah, I *really* haven’t gotten the hang of the toppings yet, though. I’ve put on enough for a deep dish pizza, almost, and I haven’t got the lip / edge of the crust right yet. Next time, I’m going to try for that, and probably try for a deep dish edge, until I get the hang of going lighter on the amount of ingredients. LOL, but then, I like it deluxe/supreme.
I did much better on the oregano this last time. — At least I’m picking it all up quickly. I know by the taste and by how the prep process goes, what to do better next time. Very neat, enjoying it!
I’m going to branch out to try other doughs and breads / pastries. 🙂 Pizza dough bread sticks first, though.
I haven’t braved doing the pizza sauce from scratch yet. Possibly next time. My intuition says it’s a very thick, reduced marinara, tomato paste consistency. — I tried a basil pesto base for a first attempt at a Shejidan Green Sauce Pizza, and that worked very, very well, quite tasty. Will keep at it.
When I sift flour for baking I usually sift into a bowl sitting on a scale, besides I usually dont’t have to sift flour – one of the advantages of glutenfree baking ist the fine flour. On the down side any feel for elasticity of the dough is useless.
Check the flour bag. It should say how many cups per bag. I think it was 4 cups per pound for the brand I was using. When I did a huge dinner, we were making double recipes of bread where the recipe was 8 cups of flour. I had to know how much flour to purchase.
I measure my flour out, then do as my recipe says and leave the last cup to add at the end. When it gets to sticky nasty mess and I’m ready to kneed, then I turn it out and add some, kneed and add more as necessary. I only sift flour for cakes, and haven’t made cookies in ages.
Didn’t the use of standardized measuring cups and spoons only start within the last 100-120 years? I got in the habit of measuring salt in my palm after watching Alton Brown.
Funny, since he is so big on a cooking-as-chemistry and measuring approach. He rocks. Very enjoyable, “Good Eats.”
Wow, can’t recall where my blender is, or was. Will have to look next time I’m in my kitchen.
The reason why serious bakers/bakeries weigh their dry ingredients, esp. flour, is that it picks up moisture and swells/shrinks in size with the humidity outside. Casual, American cooks traditionally have done volume rather than weight/mass measurements. British cookbooks list measurements by weight. If you want to bake bread of a specific weight (say if you are a commercial baker trying to sell a uniform product), then you need to weigh your ingredients. I don’t care if my breads are a little (or a lot) larger or smaller each baking, so I go the other route and let the weight of the individual ingredients vary, but I keep the proportion of flour to liquid relatively regular by the feel of the dough. Just as tasty and a lot less anal and relaxing for me.
I think that especially in large volume, say, dealing with a hundred lb bag of flour, weight is going to be reliable re finished product: my loaves going by volume measure vary quite a bit (maybe an inch in loft) in size baking to baking, but if you’re commercial, you can’t have a display of vari-sized loaves: people will ask ‘What’s that one? And that one? And that one?” endlessly. 😉
I will say my last moment fix produced a nice loaf this last time: it was an overage of flour, so I had to work a little to get it extracted from the machine (it had overtopped the edge and covered the handle I need to reach to free the pan)—but the flavor and texture were the best ever. Because it was what I could reach fast, I took a tablespoon or so of brown rice flour and added it to the pound of white flour and cup of bran, and it really turned out a nice crust.
My mother’s mother (descended from the German settlers in SE TX) made the best bread On baking day, she would make enough bread to last a week (she had 12 kids, 8 of them boys, so that was about 10-12 loaves a week). Never used a recipe. My mom never learned to bake bread, or make pies. She was doing good to make cakes from a mix. Unfortunately, Mom’s family at the other end of the state from us — so it was about a 10-hour drive to visit. My dad baked, though. Breads, coffee cakes, rolls, pies, cobblers, biscuits. I need to hunt down my crock pot bread recipe. — You’re supposed to use a large coffee can or shortening can to bake it in — but try finding such a can these days! It was a really easy recipe — combine the ingredients, put the dough in the greased, floured coffee can, put the coffee can in the crock pot, cover the coffee can with a paper towel (to absorb condensation from the crock pot lid) and put the lid on the crock pot. The bread rose in the crock pot, and by the time it was done rising, enough heat had built up in the crock pot to bake it. Made good bread with a nice fine grain.
Sounds good!
If it’s not a laptop (because I’m not sure about all of them), then you can just pop the h key off with a nail file or screwdriver and you know, bang the keyboard on the desk upside down until it falls out. 🙂 And push the key back on.
Well, it’s a laptop, but sometimes the key gets cranky about being pulled off on a Dell…I used fishing line, run around the key, and got some unidentifiable food ? substance out. It’s one of the hazards of living/eating lunch/working in the same chair.
If it’s really some food under your “h” (now that sounds silly) you could try to let it be eaten by ants – don’t hold me responsible for side effects.
Better than fishing line should be dental floss, there is some fluffy variation which might be helpful – and if it’s a waterproof keyboard maybe even try a waterpick.
I know some orangeoil cleaner (for bicycles) in a spray can, orangeoil shouldn’t be much of a danger to a keyboard, and maybe you can blow that dirt away with it.
Fishing line sounds good if it’s a laptop 🙂