My second go at machine baking went a bit better. This time I played safe and did a plain white loaf, using newly-bought flour and milk powder, as per the recipe. Four hours or so later, I tipped out a big billowing loaf, light as a feather and with a crispy crust, the very opposite of Saturday's sour, leaden lump. Next time I'll try a mix of wholemeal and white flour, see if I can get something between white fluff and brown sludge.
The answer lies in gluten, I think. The recipe for the disastrous wholemeal loaf specified vitamin C powder, but I couldn't find that anywhere, so didn't dare try another wholemeal recipe. I've since done some research that revealed that wholemeal flour has less gluten than white, which is why you add vitamin C powder, to improve the texture. Some people also pooh-poohed the addition of milk powder, saying it's there to make machine bread more like store-bought, ie soft and crumbly, which is not what I'm trying to achieve - far from it. So I have a suspicion that my ideal recipe might be one with some strong wholemeal four, some very strong white four, olive oil and water. Plus salt and sugar (you need some sugar for the yeast).
2 comments:
Last time I bought vitamin C powder, I had to go to the chemist for it. xx
Thanks, Jane, I will try that. I've been trying a rye recipe that is just great, my fave so far.
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