I made hummus tonight.
Does that get me many rungs up the middle class ladder!?

Ps. Well done molgrips. Homemade bread is ace

Pah I make it every week to go with my homemade bread 😛

Hummous and bread is all you’re allowed to eat Junkyard, isn’t it?

Re the bread I think I would like to try white flour just to see.

was making bread not the preserve of the poor who couldnt afford to buy it?

And that’s the point. Middle class people choose to do things that poor people once had to do, because they think it’s more ‘real’ or ‘back in touch with nature/the earth/tradition/olden days’ or some such guff. Or because they fancy dabbling in it as a fun little diversion. The sort of thing that would make actual poor people roll their eyes and grumble bitterly.

A bit like cycling for transport when you have a perfectly good car 🙂

You’ve crafted a dwarf fighting bread there. A combination weapon or foodstuff.

Wholemeal is always a bit more dense, the crust is usually much better though. The Chorleywood stuff from the shops stands up with the use of additives and an unhealthy amount of fat and salt to give texture and taste respectively.

Check the use by date on the flour if it’s wholemeal as the germ goes rancid after about 6 weeks to 3 months at room temperature and it won’t hold gas too well. White flour will go to a year but may be a bit “wriggly” when you come to make it up!

Extended kneading’s a bit of a myth for 90% bread really..

10 mins isn’t extended time, that’s how long it takes. You wouldn’t bake it for 10 mins. because “you believe that extended baking is a myth”

Yeti, won’t prove without proper kneading 😆

Try not to overthink it mol.

Oh FFS! Kill me now…..

Adding vitamin C (but this is an additive so maybe cheating)

I throw in a few big drops of lemon juice* – also if can’t get granary then add some mixed seeds or sunflower kernels and/or linseed

*[middleclass]lemons are available at the farmers market but I prefer the ones we grow – they are absolutely delightful and never been near a white van[/middleclass]

If my old flour production knowledge is still current vit c helps with bleaching the flour at the milling stage (brought in to replace benzoyl peroxide).

Sandwich I don’t think we add Ascorbic acid for anything other than assisting in forming a good crumb structure, the days of Bleach Dyox & Chlorine are long gone thankfully (no more BA sets)

Here’s a method I can recommend personally (I get to eat it everyday!)

The flavour and texture are the best in the land (being slightly biased…)

telegraph recipe

Or if you’re anywhere near Bristol sign yourself up! 🙂
http://www.hartsbakery.co.uk/workshops.html

Or if you’re anywhere near Bristol sign yourself up!

He won’t go into Bristol. 😐

(even he does get the chance to spend some time in the best city in the UK)

This might sound terribly pretentious, but does one not get one’s staff to this type of work for them any more. After all, being middle class should bring some relief from the drudgery of domestic labour through the employment of the “less well off”.
And after all the hard work and debt you have had to accrue from your extensive academic studies, surely you don’t want to waste time piddling about in the kitchen, when you could be out in the great outdoors with your neuvo riche pals, and the carbon super-bike you just got to celebrate the end of the student loan.

Sandwich I don’t think we add Ascorbic acid for anything other than assisting in forming a good crumb structure, the days of Bleach Dyox & Chlorine are long gone thankfully (no more BA sets)

Or trips to A&E when the miller has a couple of lungfuls of chlorine in the middle of the night. (Delivery hose with a hole no one knew about until he went to clear a choke).

Edit, just did the sums and it’s over 10 years since I was adding ascorbic acid to flour and 8 since I last got covered in gluten, flour or wheat dust. No wonder I’m rusty 😮

Which mill did you work at Sandwich?
Spent most of my working life as an engineer in either Bakeries or Flour Mills.

Sometimes I hate the 24/7 nature of the business (never off call) but I love the history & skill in making good flour & bread (despite our mill being state of the art and run by computers)

Sometimes when wheat was being fed from the hopper to the millstones, if the feed was too fast, or if stones had got into the grain, the millstones would stop. This is where the phrase “grinding to a halt” comes from.

Lies.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/grind-to-a-halt.html

The origins of ‘grind to a halt’, or ‘ground to a halt’, are unclear. What is known is that the phrases aren’t, as they might sound, mediaeval, but are of quite recent coinage. The earliest examples that I can find of either term in print is from The Nevada State Journal, December 1934…

The lateness of the emergence of the phrase in print does tend to rule out windmilling as the source – the heyday of such being long past by the 1930s.

I did 20 odd years with Ranks. Starting in Shelford outside Cambridge as a trainee. All line-shafting built in 1865 and demolished around 1990. Moved to Barry, where the chap was gassed, left before the new mill was built to go to Felixstowe where I left after our lease was not renewed.It’s now a container park!
Felixstowe was a modern short surface plant and also a bit of a test-bed for the company. A lot of Ranks later automation has been based on work carried out there. I miss the free-time (4 on, 4 off pattern with an 18 day break every 8 weeks) but not the constant jet-lagged feeling and poor health. A young mans job now that single miller working is the norm.
Has automation managed to find a replacement for the hands in milled stock checking yet? It was woeful when they first tried it out with lots of hollow grinding going on!

unclear.

Well, until I hear a clear one, my definition will do me. No, not really lies. 🙂

you’re not climbing the ladder without a pansonic…

😀

Hmm.. Had another piece today, 24 hours later, and it’s beginning to smell quite yeasty. Yeast should all be dead by now no?

Ok here’s todays test loaf


New recipe flour 13.8% taken straight off the mill. mixed & proved overnight, baked today.

See mol? You should’ve started with a nice simple white. That’s a grand looking load there MrOvershoot!

Friday, I’m WFH so I’ll be combing that with BFH (baking from home).

I didn’t manage to pick up any vitamin C so I’ll just try longer kneading first, see how that goes.

Mol just be careful with the addition of Vit C (ascorbic acid) as if overdone can make for a “thirsty” loaf, by that I mean you need a glass of water straight after not the dough needs more flour.

I was supposed to be doing a bit of baking yesterday afternoon, but my wife’s hospital visit dragged on for 7 hours :/

Might see if I get time this weekend as I have a cupboard full of different flours to go at, including a full divide Canadian @ 14.8% 😮

I’m at home today too mol. I fancy showing you how it’s done to be honest. I think there’s some bread flour at home. I’ll have a look when I get in.

Cool, that would help actually!

I’m going to see if we have a loaf tin, see if that makes a difference.

Well, that worked out quite well.

More kneading, 10 minutes of it, turned the dough really rubbery. It rose well, proved ok but the end result wasn’t an awful lot larger than last time, but I made it a slightly different shape so hard to tell.

The bread was very tasty again but rubbery as well.

I took the water out of the oven at 10 mins to get a crispy crust. I thought I’d burned it, it was really dark and rock hard, but it’s softened up a lot now. The bread is slightly less dense but a lot more rubbery. I think I will try more yeast next time and perhaps less kneading. Mrs Grips wasn’t so keen on the rubberyness.

Tried the flying sponge method. Rose well, proved really well but the dough was too foamy and soft to use without a tin. The two rolls I made ended up like biscuits. Bread is soft and fluffy but quite crumbly, crust is crunchy but soft. Slices are half to three quarters the size of a bought loaf.

Mrs G says she preferred the first effort though.