Baking Bread - a little help.

[Patler]

I've made bread dough for years, making specialty breads from a few basic dough recipes.

But, I always hated making the dough itself, and for various reasons now find it hard to knead dough like I did. So....I bought a Cuisinart stand mixer with dough hooks. Problem solved, right?

Hardly. My dough turns out like crap. About one in 5 batches is good, the rest lousy.

Any tricks to mixing bread dough in stand mixer?

[pbmax]

I have no knowledge of baking bread, but I wanted to test a theory out about questions like this so I googled "kneading dough in mixer" and ran into this link:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/483188

You may have already done the same/similar.

My theory is that all the promises of home appliances inevitably cause a household to change the way they do things in order to realize the benefit of the appliance. My family thinks I do far too much thinking about purchases like this and want too many questions answered before committing to a purchase. But my experience is that not only will I spend the money on the appliance, but I will inevitably not be able to do what I initially intended to do, will need to do it entirely differently or change the original goal. Drives me crazy.

So theory partially confirmed with a superficial glance at the posts on that thread. Need the correct recipe and bread dough (not all work in a stand mixer), need mixer specific instructions and not all cookbooks will distinguish between the two methods for you. You also apparently need to learn what "autolyse" is (rest period after rough mix of ingredients to let flour absorb liquid).

Good luck Patler!

[Patler]

Thanks, pbmax, I think!

Sounds like I need to start using different bread recipes/instructions until I find one that works, and then go from there. That is a bit frustrating, knowing the sayings about old dogs and all!

[MadtownPacker]

Just smoke a fat ass joint and I'm sure your bread will taste better.

[pbmax]

I am getting hungry. Here is another nice discussion and a book recommendation for mixer-ready receipes.

http://ths.gardenweb.com//forums/load/cooking/msg1105372414062.html?12

http://www.amazon.com/Bernard-Claytons-Complete-Book-Breads/dp/0743287096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226071093&sr=1-1

[pbmax]

Just smoke a fat ass joint and I'm sure your bread will taste better.

Don't you want to mix the bud into the dough and then just eat it at once? Or does that just work with hash and brownies?

[Freak Out]

Kneading dough by hand is the only way to do it right. Sorry Snoop.

[SkinBasket]

Kneading dough by hand is the only way to do it right. Sorry Snoop.

Same with masturbation. So double sorry.

[Patler]

Same with masturbation. So double sorry.

I can't use a stand mixer for that either??

[red]

just go drop a whole 2 dollars for a loaf at the store you cheap bastard

[Joemailman]

I can't use a stand mixer for that either??

There's only one way to find out.

[3irty1]

Stand Mixers are the only way to go for kneading and probably also masturbation. They are much cleaner and much much faster with more consistent results. I'll assume that your recipe is fine although I'll add that you ought to be measuring your ingredients by weight rather than volume for consistency. When you say your dough is crap does that mean it doesn't rise? Your dough probably isn't under-kneaded because you are using the stand mixer but if it weren't, your yeast could be going off but the gluten structure of your dough could be underdeveloped and thus not catching the gases that the yeast are excreting. To know if your dough is developed pinch off a tiny piece and stretch it. You should be able to stretch it thin enough to see through. This is often called a "baker's window." Another common problem is that you could have a jar or box of yeast that sits for a month and dies. Buy a new jar of yeast and store it in the fridge it will last much longer in there. Lots of new bakers try to let their dough rise right in the stainless steel mixer bowl. This isn't the best choice as the bowl acts as a heat sink and really really cripple the rising of the yeast. Try a glass or plastic bowl instead and put a towel over the top of it to block the light. If you want you can turn your oven into a proofer by setting your bowl of dough in the oven with pan of hot water. This should provide a warm, dark, humid environment for yeast to do their thing. If nothing still works, perhaps your tap water is really chlorinated and is killing the yeast. Try bottled water, filtered water, or just let your tap water sit out overnight in an open container.

Happy baking.

[Patler]

Stand Mixers are the only way to go for kneading and probably also masturbation. They are much cleaner and much much faster with more consistent results. I'll assume that your recipe is fine although I'll add that you ought to be measuring your ingredients by weight rather than volume for consistency. When you say your dough is crap does that mean it doesn't rise? Your dough probably isn't under-kneaded because you are using the stand mixer but if it weren't, your yeast could be going off but the gluten structure of your dough could be underdeveloped and thus not catching the gases that the yeast are excreting. To know if your dough is developed pinch off a tiny piece and stretch it. You should be able to stretch it thin enough to see through. This is often called a "baker's window." Another common problem is that you could have a jar or box of yeast that sits for a month and dies. Buy a new jar of yeast and store it in the fridge it will last much longer in there. Lots of new bakers try to let their dough rise right in the stainless steel mixer bowl. This isn't the best choice as the bowl acts as a heat sink and really really cripple the rising of the yeast. Try a glass or plastic bowl instead and put a towel over the top of it to block the light. If you want you can turn your oven into a proofer by setting your bowl of dough in the oven with pan of hot water. This should provide a warm, dark, humid environment for yeast to do their thing. If nothing still works, perhaps your tap water is really chlorinated and is killing the yeast. Try bottled water, filtered water, or just let your tap water sit out overnight in an open container.

Happy baking.

Thanks, but my problem is only since using a stand mixer. I'm not a new bread baker, I have been baking bread for a long, long time (50 years). I know the yeast, water, rising issues, etc. My recipes have come from at least my grandmother who baked in a lumber camp in the late 1800s. Where she got them from, I don't know, perhaps someone from the camp. I'm certainly no bread expert, but for as long as I mixed and kneaded by hand it usually turned out fine. Same very basic recipes, using the same yeasts, same flour, same water (well water) that always produced good doughs for the last 20 years in this house (given the variances that arise for any home baker) now are wildly inconsistent since I started using a stand mixer a year ago last Christmas.

By the way, about 5 years ago we bought a convection oven that has a bread proofing cycle. What a great addition that was! I hoped that the mixer would simplify the dough making process, which I never particularly enjoyed anyway. But, so far I haven't seemed to find the knack for using the machine to get the dough I want.

I have varied the length of kneading and the speed at which I knead. I've never gotten a result I particularly cared for with it. Recently, I have tried different flours. I have also experimented with different yeasts. I usually buy bulk granulated yeast (yes, stored in the refrigerator), but started out baking bread many years ago only with cake yeasts.

In short, so long as I mix and knead by hand, no problem. Using the stand mixer with dough hooks was intended to make my life easier and I hoped to bake breads more often, because as I said, I really don't particularly like making dough. But it hasn't turned out to be the improvement that the oven was for rising the dough.

[3irty1]

Do you use a sponge or just a straight dough method of mix, knead, rise, bake? Exactly what are some of the symptoms of your bad dough? Both Bread flour and regular old AP flour will have more than enough protein to get a good rise. You can likely rule out the yeast as the problem as long as its not dead. Saf yeast like you are probably using has been bred for speed but I once kept a sourdough starter of purely wild yeast going for over a year. Yeast is yeast as long as its not dead.

You should be kneading on a medium speed for about 6 or 7 minutes I'd say... about the time it takes for the dough to climb up the hook. When finished the bowl should be totally clean and the dough should be able to be handled without it being too sticky.

[Patler]

I've always just used a straight dough method. I like to use bread flour because I make an apple streudel from bread dough that I pull thin, cover with butter, apples cinnamon and sugar, then roll and bake. Bread flour gives me a stronger dough to pull out the way I like it without tearing. I have used a lot of different flours over the years until someone got me onto King Arthur, which actually mixes their flours to consistent protein content, and I think the result are more consistent when I make it by hand.

Mostly I just don't like the texture of the dough from the mixer. When I make it by hand it tends to be fairly smooth. From the mixer it tends to have a fine "lumpiness" to it. I don't know how to explain it. It doesn't smooth out with more kneading. I have varied the speed and length of mixing time, added flour even more gradually then when I do it by hand, used less flour than normal, used more flour than normal, yet it still doesn't have as smooth of a texture as I am accustomed to.

I made two batches side by side, all the same ingredients. The one by hand turned out the way I expect, the one from the mixer not as nice.

Any ideas?