Bread not working out

[cathy79]

Look forward to your recipes Tebasile.  I'm loving anything "whole" at the moment.

[Quirk]

Thank you all so much.

I tried another two loaves yesterday and both were heavy again.

The second rise just never got above the rim and as soon as cooking started, they sunk even further.

Tomorrow I am going to try putting it back in the TMX before the second rise and see how that goes. I've been giving it two hours for the second rise, so I don't think that is the problem, maybe it needs more kneading.

Thanks again for all the advice, by trial and error, I hope to get there eventually!

[I Love Bimby!]

Your not alone Quirk, I have this problem with loaves sometimes too and wonder if IRS because I've pushed it into the tin???

[judydawn]

Keep at it Quirk and you will succeed.  I had all those problems with my early attempts too and only found success after isi's recipes were posted.  Only failures I have had since then have been because the fresh yeast I bought was not fresh at all.
There are some very good breadmakers on this forum so take heed of their advice and you will eventually have success. I can understand your frustration at this point though.  You cannot imagine how excited I was when my first successful loaf came out of the oven and since then take on board all the good advice Chookie and other members have to offer.

[achookwoman]

Quirk,  we just have to get you going.   I looked you up on this site and see you live in Perth.  I live near Melb.  and it is a bit far for me to come and give you a hand .   Next best thing would be if you could describe EXACTLY what you do.  Type of flour,  all the measurements...flour, water yeast (type and how much).  how hot is it in your kitchen.?  Do you add any thing else? Size of tin.?
Every one who makes bread wants a different result,  so don't be shy about asking for help to achieve what you want.   I have been baking bread for 40 years and teaching other for nearly as long and I am amazed at the different types of bread that is being baked by the people on this Forum.   .If I cant help you as JD said,  some one will.

[Quirk]

You have already been so helpful!

I pretty much follow the recipe in the EDC book exactly. Sometimes, instead of the 100g of wheat, I instead use 100g of rye flour. The flour I am using is from a Weigh and Pay and is good quality bread flour. The yeast is Lowan's granulated yeast, kept in the fridge, useby date is Novermebr 2010. The water is quite warm.

The kitchen temperature would be about 23-27 degrees.

After the it has kneaded in the TMX, I pull it out and put it in a warm glass bowl, lightly oiled, and put it in the oven which has been on 50 degrees. I turn the oven off, put a teatowel over it and leave it to rise. It rises really well, more than doubles.

I take it out, punch it down, then remove from the bowl carefully. Next, I have tried the following three variations:
1. Carefully shape it into a log, put it in my bread tin (standard size bread tin, from a proper bread baking shop.)
2. As per number one, but cut the loaf in half and put the two halves in the tin, to create a high-top loaf (not that this has ever happened!)
3. Pat the dough down flat into a rectangle, roll it up and tuck ends under. Then put it in the tin.

Next, sprinkle top with water and sesame seeds. Sometimes, I have left this part out.
Teatowel back over it and back in the oven, which is still ever so slightly warm, around 30 degrees.
Wait up to 2 hours for it to rise, but it never gets above the tin.

Next, I either remove it from the oven, preheat to 200 degress and put it in. Or, leave it in the oven and turn it on to 200 degrees and let it cook for around 25 minutes.

With 10 minutes of it cooking, it has sunk a bit. The resulting loaf would make a great door stop.

My darling partner today was caught out buying shop bread and sneaking it in to the freezer, saying he really misses "normal" bread that doesn't weigh a tonne. He was so sheepish!

I have tried a few other recipes, but follow the same method above. All turn out like lead weights. So, this makes me think it is not the recipe, it is my technique, or lack of!

[Nay-nay]

Maybe oven gets too hot when doing that first rise. Just leave it on the bench it will rise fine - well mine does anyway.   

[Quirk]

Just to add, on a positive note... we won't run out of breadcrumbs until about 2012! 

Nay-nay, that could be true... a few times the oven feels really warm, so maybe it is trying to start cooking???

[judydawn]

    Nice to see you still have a sense of humour Quirk.

[achookwoman]

Quirk,  glad to see you so determined .    NayNay is right, your kitchen is warm enough to just leave the bread on the bench.   I think you are over proving the first rise.   Dont let it rise more than double ,  infact the first rise can be just under double.   To get your confidence back,  and to produce a bread that your partner will love,   make some of isi's Portuguese rolls.  I have a freezer full of bread crumbs,  from experiments.   While the bread is rising both 1st and 2nd rise ,  spray the top with water.   This will allow the bread to rise without forming a crust.  Good Luck.  P.S everything else you are doing is exactly right.

[Depome]

I've been making my bread for about six years now, and honestly, I think most TMX bread stinks  The best recipes that I have are too moist for the TMX and make a heck of a mess. Consequently, the drier recipes, which work ok in the TMX (from a removability perspective) are tougher loaves. Bread rolls are better with a drier recipe so I sometimes use the TMX for those, but at the moment I'm settled on using the breadmaker for the kneading, and oven baking which gives a much better result than machine baking.

What you may be doing wrong:

* Prove your yeast first. Even if you think you don't have a dud batch, it may have passed on since you last used it. Oxygen is what ages yeast, so make sure you keep it in an airtight container, and preferably in the fridge or freezer. Prove the yeast by combining your tepid water and sugar in a jug, and stirring in the yeast. Leave it for ten minutes to get super-frothy, then it's proven itself (to you ) and ready to be used.

* Don't ever simply do a straight swap of wholemeal to white flour, all of that extra bran in it makes the loaf much heavier. You can either add extra water, or reduce the flour weight if you are swapping. You need about 2/3 wholemeal and 1/3 white. Rye flour is a particularly heavy flour too so you have to be even more careful about using it.

* Room temperature is ideal for the first proving, but you must protect the bread from drying out. I suspect that your (dry) oven is perhaps starting to cook the surface of your bread, which will greatly limit its ability to expand later on. The temp of your room, AND THE HUMIDITY make a huge difference to the amount of time to prove the bread. BUT THEY ALSO AFFECT HOW MUCH FLOUR IS REQUIRED. Cooking bread isn't about following a recipe so much as knowing what a good dough looks and feels like. Each time you make it you need to observe and prod the dough, and learn what is a good and a bad dough. When you've sussed this out you will know instantly if you need to add more or less flour to the dough, particularly with each season and change in humidity. You must cover the bread while it does its first rise, and leaving it in the TMX is fine for that, but leave the MC in, and put a tea towel over the top too. Tea towels are supposed to be damp when covering bread dough, otherwise the bread starts to dry and 'set'.

* After the first rise, get the dough out and punch it so that it deflates itself. You don't have to get it back to square one/air free like a pizza dough, you just need to knock the bulk of the volume out of it. You don't need to shape the dough unless you're making rolls. If you're making a loaf your dough should be moist enough to eventually fill the bread tin without you having done anything special to it. I literally punch mine in the bread machine, lift the basket out and turn it upside down so that the dough falls in to my bread tin. It only occupies about half of the base of the tin, but it fills out and grows enormously. Again cover with a tea towel and leave on the bench top. I've been using a dry tea towel for this bit lately and it's been when FOR THE SECOND RISE. I wouldn't do it for the first rise.

* Dough is SUPER SENSITIVE to being touched, nudged etc. If a bit of tea towel sticks to it, and you remove it, the loaf will deflate. If your fingers touch it, the loaf can deflate. If you put the bread tin down (including into the oven) with anything other than feather fingers, then your loaf will slowly deflate. I often upset mine at this point, and then I curse and curse because I need to let it prove again, for another hour 

* All of the above is about the yeast rise, and the reaction between water and the wheat proteins which start to form gluten. There is another rise with bread though, and that is the oven rise which occurs when you place the dough into a HOT oven, killing the yeast, and allowing those air bubbles to expand even further. Putting bread into a cold oven certainly looks like a time-saver at a TMX demo, but it's a stupid way to make bread  That's why the basic wholewheat bread rolls resemble dinner roll rock cakes more than bread rolls  You should preheat your oven to the hottest temperature available to you. When you put the bread tin or try in to the oven (with feather-light fingers!!!!!!!!) immediately turn the oven down to about 180 degrees Celsius. It should take 30 mins max to cook. I've got a jumbo bread tin and my bread takes 20-25 mins in a fan forced oven. Unfortunately I can't turn the fan off in my oven, but I think you'd find that base heat only will give better results with bread making (as it does with most baking).

* The bread is cooked when it has come away from the pan slightly at the edges, and all the usual nonsense about it sounding hollow. Bread *always* sounds hollow to me when I tap the bottom, even when it turns out to be doughy in the middle still! Use the time as your guide, and look to see that the bread has come away from the edges of the tin.

* You can leave dough to prove for too long, exhausting the yeast and gluten. If you leave it too long the second time, it will climb out of your (appropriately sized) tin and fall over the sides of it. It may even do this just after you've put it into the oven. So don't leave its first rise for three hours because you think it isn't big enough yet, you're better off putting it in the window where the sun is shining in. You can also heat your oven to 50 degrees, turn it off, then place a dish of water in the bottom of it, cover the dough and do the second rise in there, but you'll have to remove it to preheat your oven to mega-hot anyway. It's not really ideal. Your bread needs to look almost as you want it when you put it into the oven. If you're expecting it to rise 100% and not putting it into the oven until then, then the smash of hot oven air is going to break all of those gluten fibres so that the loaf collapses.

In short:
1. Test your yeast
2. Cover the dough to keep moisture in and prevent the top of it drying out
3. Don't worry about shaping it after the first prove - just throw it in the tin. A good LOAF dough will spread. Bread roll doughs should be drier (same goes for cottage loaves) and you really DON'T want those spreading!
4. Cover and protect the dough again - this is challenging with things like rolls and cottage loaves IME. Using cling wrap is a bad idea as it's really prone to sticking to the dough's surface which causes it to deflate when you remove the plastic.
5. Preheat your oven for a good 15 mins - make sure it is as hot as it goes when you GENTLY slide the bread into it, then turn the temp down. That massive hit of heat will see it immediately increase in size, and will kill the yeast off.
6. Make sure you have some fat in your dough mixes, butter and olive oil are great. These preserve the loaf so that it lasts 5 days instead of 1 (if you haven't scoffed it by then)

[cookie1]

Quirk, I live in Perth and am willing to give you a hand. I will be away until about 22nd March so if you haven't had any success by then perhaps we can talk or visit. I am south of the river. PM me if you need help after that. We're leaving DH home but he can't use the computer.

[Quirk]

Wow, massive post from Depome, thank you so much for the time taken to help me! Cookie, also thankyou, might take you up on that offer when you get back

Now, fingers crossed here... after following all of these tips, I now have a loaf in the oven that actually rose above the rim of the tin on the second rise. I have never achieved that yet!

Did what Depome suggested and had the oven on really high, turned it down when I put the tin in ever so carefully.

So, fingers crossed, loaf will be cooked in 20 minutes. I will leave it an hour or so before cutting. Will take photos!

[Quirk]

Update: Bread has already dropped 

[Depome]

Is the yeast old/knackered?
What the temp/humidity like there?
Are you using PROPER bread (strong) flour?