James Morton (GBBO) bread webchat - Fri 27 Sept 1-2pm

shysal

I too am a keen bread maker, my recipe books include Paul Hollywood's and I have yours on order. Your show-stopping creations made exciting viewing on Bake Off.
My question is about the no-knead method of bread making. It is so easy and gives good results, but when I use a white flour the resulting loaves are a rather grey colour inside, is it me or is it normal?

Hi shysal! Glad to hear you've got the book on order! I am a big fan of the no-knead method, but it does, as you have noticed, result in a rather different 'crumb'. If you knead a bread well, you'll notice a white crumb with lots of little bubbles. If you don't knead, you'll have thicker walled, larger and more irregular bubbles, due to the less organised gluten formation. This can sometimes seem to have a 'grey' appearance - rather like the inside of a sourdough, for example. This is no bad thing, and I quite like the slightly chewier texture that results. If you would like a more standard, bright white, kneaded crumb, add a few "stretch and folds" through the prove.

James

CariGransnet

Can I please ask for tips on baking gluten free bread that doesn't turn out like a brick? So many things I would like to use the dough for for my DD but so far not been terribly successful.

Hi Cari! The best tip I've ever learned for gluten free bread is to incorporate (powdered) psyllium husk into the dough - this is a fibre supplement you can buy from most health food shops. It acts as a substitute for the gluten (somehow - I've never looked into the science of it) and means you can properly shape and make the bread as you would any other. You can make great bread without any eggs, or with pure corn flour if you really want! No more cakey-brickiness...

James

googleeyes

Hi James. We all know fresh bread tastes nicer - but is it really worth the effort when a loaf from the bakers is so cheap?

Hiya googleeyes! Oh, it's of course worth the effort! It's satisfaction galore and really, doesn't need to be much effort. Yes, it can take a long time chronologically, but it needn't take up much of your time - less time than popping to the shops, definitely. You don't need to knead or any of that jazz, and you can just chuck your dough in the fridge overnight or whilst out for the day and come back to it later. And it's FAR cheaper than bread, too - I often use cheap supermarket flour (about 60p for 1.5kg - enough for 3 really large loaves)!

James

Zorro

googleeyes - have you thought of buying a breadmaker? James, do you think they're worthwhile?

Hi Zorro! I'm not a fan of breadmakers. They can make a loaf of bread fast, but they can't do it well. They cannot shape, one of the most important aspects of breadmaking. They prove breads at high temperatures so you don't get the beautiful flavour of a loaf that's proved cold/at room temperature for a long period of time. And you can make bread by hand with just about as little effort as using a breadmaker involves - you can even get it all ready and prove it overnight in the fridge and have it ready to bake fresh in the morning. And it will taste better than ANYTHING a breadmaker can churn out. 5 minutes total for great bread is not an exaggeration.

James

MrsSB

I make all of my own bread but have only had success with white flour. Do you have any tips to make my wholemeal loaves lighter and less "brick-like"as I'd love to make wholemeal or granary bread but its always way too dense.

It's all about the recipe! A wholemeal or granary bread needs a LOT of water - much, much more than a white loaf. Then, the 'meal' of the wholemeal can take a wee bit of time to soak up the water, so half an hour in it can turn out that your loaf is STILL too dry! So find a good recipe that has absolutely loads of water in it - it should be very, very sticky. Then, once you've got your sticky dough, give it an extra prove. This will let it soak up water as I say, but help develop the gluten more for a lighter loaf and let the yeast do their work to end up with a sweeter flavour.

James

ollieamber54

Hi James - is Paul really as scary sa he looks on the bakeoff? And what was it like the first time you ever made anything on the show? Terrifying I would imagine

Paul's a cuddly bear. He's lovely really, but puts on a simon cowell-esque persona for the purposes of telly.

limpet

Yes I want to know more about Bake Off too. I would love to be on it (baking mad) but some of the technical challenges look scary. How did you get on to the show in the first place?

Bake off is a great thing to do - for anyone who may be reading! I actually loved the technical challenges; they were my favourite bit. I wasn't one for practising and making things perfect and pretty and intricate... but some others were. And I think it's good bake off has that mix. I just applied for it after the 2nd season, after all my uni friends pressured me into it. They thought I had the most USPs... It's telly after all.

icequeen

Hi James, how often do you make your own bread. Do you always have a loaf in the house? What if you just want to make a piece of toast?

Hi icequeen! I try to always have fresh bread! And as for toast, I've usually got a loaf in the freezer, sometimes pre-sliced and ready for the toaster. Getting a good, high-sided loaf tin is a really good thing to do, so you can make bread that's big enough for sandwiches and toast and things.

carbqueen

Ha I am another Bake Off obsessive. I would love to know how you combined it with your medical studies - which presumably are pretty full on even before you have to spend every spare minute practising cake.

indigo

hello James - how do you write a book and medical study?

Apologies for grouping these ones together indigo and carbqueen - but it's the same answer! I try to keep everything to weekends and holidays, and the bake-off was handy because it was filmed every weekend. On top of that, very high stress levels and the sacrificing of a chunk of my social life. I'm running a marathon in 2 days and haven't run in 3 weeks...

carbqueen

PS didn't you get hot in the jumpers?

Sometimes! Sometimes the tent was freezing though... We had to wear the same clothes day 1 and 2, so had no choice but to keep them on.

lucymaxrosie

Why bread for your book and not cake or biscuits? (I like bread - I prefer cake though)

Many, many reasons. I love bread. I love the science behind it and I love that it's a staple. But I hate the way it has been portrayed - as something that's difficult or time consuming. It is neither. I wanted to demystify it and I think, as a home baker and not a professional one using commercial recipes, I could provide something that no-one had done before. I can bake a batch of cupcakes and eat 2 and feel sick and then I've got 10 that start to go stale, or I can bake bread and make many meals out of it, freeze it, or just eat it all if I want. I love it.

MiceElf

We make all our own bread, have done ever since the 1973 strike by the bakers. The only thing we haven't tried is sourdough. Any tips? Friends have not had success with this.

We also find that the quality of the flour makes a huge difference. Marriages is the best. Do you agree?

Tips for sourdough is that you'll be fine if you're experienced breadmakers! One mistake people often make is going straight for it - but I feel it requires a little background. The biggest thing to make sure you've got is a healthy sourdough starter - it should be rising and falling with regular feeds. It is best used when it at about double the size of when you fed it - its peak. This is when there are the most healthy yeast cells viable to rise your bread with.

As for flour quality, I'm not fussy! I find that flour protein content is the biggest thing, so marriage's very strong white flour (they also make the white for waitrose) is very easy to work with because it has a huge amount of gluten-forming protein in it that can soak up a LOT of water. In terms of flavour, I really like marriage's wholemeal, but I quite like using much lower protein white flours like Shipton Mill's. And supermarket value ones too. It's nice to use flours high in British wheat too. When making your sourdough starter, make sure to use organic, stoneground wholemeal flour. This will make the chance of 'culturing' up the right bugs higher.

James

petitpois

What sort of medicine are you planning on specialising in? I take it your meticulous nature in that is why you are a succesful baker too?

Meticulous! There's always room for improvement... I've got no idea what I'd like to do - it's very difficult to choose. I'm just doing my rotations just now and I've enjoyed pretty much everything, which is nice but makes it difficult. I still don't even know between surgery/medicine/GP. Probably not A+E or anaesthetics...

Aka

Easy recipes for breads that contain non-wheat flours or wheat mixed with other flours please.

Hi Aka! I'm afraid I don't have the time here to type them out, but there's a very lovely selection in my new book! You should be able to find a copy in most places selling cookbooks (supermarkets, waterstones etc) so please do leaf through it. There's so many in there; LOADS of my recipes use rye, spelt etc etc - not for the sake of health, but for flavour.

threesugars

Do you ever buy supermarket loaves?

If they're reduced to £0.06 then I am absolutely in favour of buying them and sticking them in the freezer for emergency toast! But no more.

LyndaW

Hi James

I can't say I'm much of a baker. The last time I bought a breadmaker I set it to come on at 5am and at about 6 I was woken up by an almighty crash as the thing vibrated its way off the countertop and smashed onto the kitchen floor!

That said, the two or three loaves I got out of it before were quite lovely. My question is, how do you keep fresh bread fresh for longer. I feel like on the (very) odd occasion that we've made a loaf, it's stale by the end of the day. If my sons were still living at home that wouldn't be a problem and it would all be gone but as it is we'd quite like it to last at least one more day.

Ah hah, a brilliant question LyndaW! The rule is, that the longer a loaf takes to make, then the longer if will last. So, if you make bread that you just prove once for an hour in a warm place, it will be stale by the end of the day. If you prove it overnight in the fridge, it will last a week. It's all about the OTHER bugs that are inside a dough and the amount of alcohol the yeast is producing - these are preservatives. Just like salt - you need a good amount of salt too (10g per 500g flour is right). Then, you need to bake them well - your bread needs to be properly cooked all the way through. Sourdoughs will last a good long times - take your time and 2 weeks later you'll still have perfectly toastable bread.

And about the press - I've always found them quite fine. Even when I was papped by the Mail with a yum yum, it was quite fun.

James

cm25

Hi James,

Absolutely loved watching you on bakeoff and follow you on twitter! Who do you think will win this series?

Thanks for coming onto Gransnet!

I've got my favourites and I'm sure you do too! Isn't Glenn lovely? He's so nice in real life too...

ticktock

Hi James - how does it feel to be such a trend setter? Do the comments about your jumpers get annoying?

Ha! Trend setter... I wish. I don't mind, I'm happy to support GENUINE Shetlandic knitwear!

LyndaW

Ha! I like ticktock's question. Who makes your jumpers? Or where do you buy them from? I think one of my son's might quite like one. Who is that other Swedish bloke from a crime series who's also made woolly jumpers the in thing? Is he stealing your style?

And LyndaW again! They are from Jamieson's of Lerwick - they don't do mail order but some of the more enterprising Shetland ladies have set up an online hand-knit service. Google it! And don't accept imitations...