Help! Bread making

All purpose flour is plain flour.

Cannot imagine what beat forty times mean

You could use either Kenwood with dough hook or breadmaker. I would use latter due to being lazy.

HTH

Just knead/beat it till it's elastic.

Just strong bread flour for bread making, Galen. I use the dough hook on its lowest setting for about five minutes and that always works out fine.

What about the measures?
Sorry, I'm new to this baking lark except with a bread maker!

Who posted the original post?

One cup is about five ounces of bread flour but there are conversion tables on Google if you want to be really accurate. If I make a one pound loaf I just look at the instructions on the bag of flour and estimate the other ingredients accordingly.

My strong four is Canadian!
It says use all purpose. If use Canadian, alter recipe?
Really

I've just made a really good loaf using the no knead method . Three cups of flour one quarter tsp yeast one and a quarter tspp sea salt and one and a half cups water . This is from memory and it's late but it's on you tube. Leave overnight and then fold it over next day and leave for a couple of hours then cook in a very hot LE creuset lidded casserole .there are comments like any sort of yeast is ok and any flour will do but I'm not that brave.

What flour were you using?

A richer sort of bread, more like a bun loaf, you can get away with using plain flour. So long as it has enough fat/egg to give it a soft texture. The Canadian strong flour is for everyday bread where only a small amount of fat, or none at all is used.

Don't alter the recipe if you use the Canadian. It will be fine.

That's interesting - cooking it in a hot Le Cresuet. Must have the same effect as a breadmaker (covered in). Bet that bread won't stay soft for too long though.

I would like to know what the "beat forty times" means though. Does it mean folding over and pressing down, as in kneading, and you count up to forty times?

galen Here is a cookery weights and measures conversion chart. it might help.

www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=american%2F+imperial+cooking+measures&btnG=Google+Search

I have a set of American cup measures, but as the density of different foodstuffs differs so much, I still cannot fathom how to translate American cups, which are volume measures. Into either metric or imperial weight measures.

That is a cup of sugar which is a very dense material should weigh a lot less than a cup of flour which is light.

I don't think its possible without a having reference charts for the cup measures which cover a big range of products.

Unless someone can enlighten me. I think that's right. +++
night night

Galen! Do not fall asleep over that bread dough.

That doesn't look like enough water for three cups (American measuring cups, which you can buy in the UK, galen, to make your life simpler ). For three cups of flour, I use about 13fl.oz (British fluid oz!) or 350-360ml of water. My bread turns out soft as a result, which is how we like it.

I think North American wheat is higher in gluten than British wheat and that's how they get away with only having all-purpose flour, as opposed to strong (high gluten) wholemeal, strong white, plain (low gluten) and self-raising. Presumably there is wholemeal and white there too. I'll have to ask my sister-in-law.

Galen, the very best book on bread making is by Elisabeth David. It's called English Bread and Yeast Cookery. It has English measures, gives you all the scientific and historical background to every aspect of yeast cookery, is beautifully written and omits nothing.

I went to bed so here's the answers. I used English measuring cups and Dove bread flour. It had a softish crust and did not have as open a texture as the YouTube one but that had a very dark crust. I could have left it in the oven for five more minutes easily. It lasted two days because it was eaten quickly. I think it could well have kept three days in the bread bin. I will try with the American cup measure. I've been struggling with breadmaking for a while and this appealed for making with the DGCs.

Thanks all.
I'll have a go when i come back from my cruise.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

And I thought it was flippin' urgent!

Have a nice one.

It was!
I was confused.
I don't like being confused.
It makes me bad tempered.
Well
More so than usual anyway

Hi Galen Hope you are enjoying your cruise If you want to save having any more stress, when you get home, just go to the local store and buy a loaf. Job done!!

Well Galen I have learnt something today. I didn't know what Artisan bread was. I went onto my trusty search engine, and it came up with this. Artisan is a skilled worker or craftsman, however Artisinal bread, is bread that is made by a skilled worker or craftsman. It is a bread which is not mass produced. I thought that it was a specific recipe, but apparently there are many different types of Artisinal bread. I also found a few small bakers on-line, from where you can purchase Artisinal bread. I read your post about ice-cream too, just the job for this weather. We are going on a Rhine cruise soon. Where are you? Happy cruising!!