@IndifferentDude Fun fact: Green bananas can be ground into “flour” and used up to 50:50 with wheat to make any bread (pumpernickel, sourdough, you name it). It won’t taste like bananas.
My mom makes the best zucchini bread you are likely to find. Her banana bread is also one of my favorites.
For regular bread I really like dill rye or sourdough.
@2many2no When I was a little tiny kid, I couldn’t say ‘raisin’, so I called it ‘burry bread’.
To this day, my family still calls it that. lol
Love it!
Kaiser rolls, French baguettes, English muffins, and caraway rye rolls with sour cream, which I make myself. I make them periodically, and soon as they are at ambient, I freeze them.
My current favorite bread is large Kaiser rolls with sesame seeds on top. They make great sandwiches and man sized hamburger buns.
I have made both hamburger buns and hot dog buns in the past, but usually don’t go to that trouble anymore. I just use the Kaiser rolls for sandwiches of all types.
I started baking during Covid 1.0 lockdown. I thought I would make French baguettes. They are just flour, water, salt and yeast…what could be so hard? Little did I know!
After several months of eating the failures of which there were a lot, I finally began to make decent baguettes. Having said nothing about this to anyone beyond the wife, I made baguettes to take to an Easter dinner with family. Lucky thing, though it was a potluck, no one thought to bring bread. And I showed up with hot…well warm anyway…baguettes fresh from the oven to rave reviews and compliments.
So now we always have bread in the freezer for most things, and when the supply begins to run low, I bake some more.
Mize en place. I can have a poolish or a bread mix in the KitchenAid in under ten minutes from a standing start in a clean kitchen as I do everything on an Oxo digital scale. There is very little clean up as I use and mess up a minimum of utensils. I know most of the recipes by heart. I also know my oven very well and have all the intermediate tools and gadgets (couche, lame, pans, parchment, rings, etc.)
English muffins are not baked so much as they are griddled and for those, I use our electric crepe maker, which works well.
And before someone asks, no, I don’t currently do sourdough. I have considered making a starter from time to time, but then I really didn’t want to be bothered to have to get it going and stable and then to maintain it. I might make bread over a couple of days and then it might be a couple of weeks or more before I am ready to do it again. Just using instant dried yeast, which I buy in a large (1-lb) package is infinitely easier and maybe more importantly reproducible time after time.
As for the reason I freeze my fresh breads, bread begins to stale almost from the time it leaves the oven. This is a process called “retrogradation” in which the exuded and gelatinized starches from the disrupted flour cells will begin to crystallize as the amylose and amylopectin macromolecules realign and force out water. The bread gets hard mostly as a result of this retrogradation as well as a loss of moisture as it dries out. This is known as staling.
Storing bread at room temperature in a covered container (ye old bread box) slows the process, but doesn’t stop it. Putting bread in a refrigerator actually accelerates staling. Freezing stops it cold, so to speak.
Commercial breads have additives (oils, glycolipids, mono and digylcerides, etc.) to help preserve and retard this staling, while homemade bread usually doesn’t.
But then my homemade bread beats anything I can buy hands down in terms of taste. In terms of cost…not so much, if one considers labor in addition to ingredients.
@Jackinga, it’s interesting that staling is caused by crystallization of the disrupted flour cells but the crystallization of the water they contain doesn’t contribute.
@btwonder Starch is composed primarily of two very high molecular weight polysaccarides, amylose (~20-25%) and amylopectin (~75-80%). The amylose is pretty much a linear polymer of glucose moieties with 1,4-alpha linkages, while the amylopectin, which is also primarily formed from glucose moieties has both 1,4-alpha glucose and 1,6-alpha glucose linkages. The amylose is linear while the amylopectin is highly branched. In most starches the amylopectin has a much, much higher molecular weight than the amylose, thus though there is more amylopectin by weight, there are far more amylose molecules.
The amylose forms semicrystalline structures by hydrogen bonding with other amylose molecules. The amylopectin? Not so much.
Above about 80°C in water, wheat starch begins to rapidly absorb water, swelling the wheat cell enormously as the water breaks up the semicrystalline amylose by replacing the amylose-amylose hydrogen bonds with amylose-water hydrogen bonds. At some point the cell walls of the wheat flour burst exuding the now “gelatinized” starches.
On cooling, though the cells have been disrupted and much of the starch exuded, the amylose in the starch will start to re-associate with other amylose molecules and expel the amylose-water hydrogen bonds. This is retrogradation.
The crystallization of water as when ice forms plays no part of this process of retrogradation.
However, that being said, if a non-retrograded bread is quick frozen, then the realignment of the amylose molecules is greatly inhibited and the amylose-water hydrogen bonds of a fresh cooked bread are preserved. So staling is stalled pretty much.
Here then is a pictorial representation of this process as taught by a well-known cooking school.
Dwarf bread. A starving man who eats just one crumb will not be hungry for days. And it is a fearsome weapon. Dwarven museums are full of legendary loaves that were wielded in historic battles.
I love zucchini bread but it always amazes me how much sugar is in it. Apple bread is very good to. A local hospital makes some of the best apple bread I’ve ever had. I eat every time I’m there.
@macromeh Pulla is amazing.
Of course, you already knew that.
But for anyone who’s never had cardamom in their bread, it’s worth searching for. (and it’s been way too long since I’ve made it)
Delicious.
Pumpernickel
/image BANANA
@IndifferentDude Fun fact: Green bananas can be ground into “flour” and used up to 50:50 with wheat to make any bread (pumpernickel, sourdough, you name it). It won’t taste like bananas.
/image banana flour package
Garlic.
@JT954 Toasted please
Green, in big denominations.
Fresh. All bread is good bread…
Nope, I’ve had a couple of baking disasters. They were not edible.
@Salanth Then I simply declare them “not bread” and carry on…
Dough. Y’know: paper, greenbacks, bucks, smackers, frogskins, cabbage, clams, bones, feria, scratch, cheddar, moolah, bacon, Benjamins, ducats, simoleons.
@ZeroCharisma
Rye, with caraway seeds
Daily
Pretzel bread
My mom makes the best zucchini bread you are likely to find. Her banana bread is also one of my favorites.
For regular bread I really like dill rye or sourdough.
Raisin with cinnamon
@2many2no When I was a little tiny kid, I couldn’t say ‘raisin’, so I called it ‘burry bread’.
To this day, my family still calls it that. lol
Love it!
@2many2no @Tadlem43 That’s cute! What did “burry” mean?
@2many2no @Kyeh Berry. I thought the raisins were berries. lol
@2many2no @Tadlem43 Oh! That makes perfect sense, really!
@2many2no @Kyeh Well, it does when your 2 1/2 or 3. lol
Focaccia
Sweetbread aka: Thymus gland! YUM!
http://giphy.com/gifs/rWZ1tzfKtOjVm5CAkR
@sicc574
Potato bread!
I like that kind of bread that is bread.
Warm.
Edible.
Any bread with sunflower seeds.
Freshly baked moringa pandesal.
Challah bread!
Kaiser rolls, French baguettes, English muffins, and caraway rye rolls with sour cream, which I make myself. I make them periodically, and soon as they are at ambient, I freeze them.
My current favorite bread is large Kaiser rolls with sesame seeds on top. They make great sandwiches and man sized hamburger buns.
I have made both hamburger buns and hot dog buns in the past, but usually don’t go to that trouble anymore. I just use the Kaiser rolls for sandwiches of all types.
I started baking during Covid 1.0 lockdown. I thought I would make French baguettes. They are just flour, water, salt and yeast…what could be so hard? Little did I know!
After several months of eating the failures of which there were a lot, I finally began to make decent baguettes. Having said nothing about this to anyone beyond the wife, I made baguettes to take to an Easter dinner with family. Lucky thing, though it was a potluck, no one thought to bring bread. And I showed up with hot…well warm anyway…baguettes fresh from the oven to rave reviews and compliments.
So now we always have bread in the freezer for most things, and when the supply begins to run low, I bake some more.
Mize en place. I can have a poolish or a bread mix in the KitchenAid in under ten minutes from a standing start in a clean kitchen as I do everything on an Oxo digital scale. There is very little clean up as I use and mess up a minimum of utensils. I know most of the recipes by heart. I also know my oven very well and have all the intermediate tools and gadgets (couche, lame, pans, parchment, rings, etc.)
English muffins are not baked so much as they are griddled and for those, I use our electric crepe maker, which works well.
And before someone asks, no, I don’t currently do sourdough. I have considered making a starter from time to time, but then I really didn’t want to be bothered to have to get it going and stable and then to maintain it. I might make bread over a couple of days and then it might be a couple of weeks or more before I am ready to do it again. Just using instant dried yeast, which I buy in a large (1-lb) package is infinitely easier and maybe more importantly reproducible time after time.
As for the reason I freeze my fresh breads, bread begins to stale almost from the time it leaves the oven. This is a process called “retrogradation” in which the exuded and gelatinized starches from the disrupted flour cells will begin to crystallize as the amylose and amylopectin macromolecules realign and force out water. The bread gets hard mostly as a result of this retrogradation as well as a loss of moisture as it dries out. This is known as staling.
Storing bread at room temperature in a covered container (ye old bread box) slows the process, but doesn’t stop it. Putting bread in a refrigerator actually accelerates staling. Freezing stops it cold, so to speak.
Commercial breads have additives (oils, glycolipids, mono and digylcerides, etc.) to help preserve and retard this staling, while homemade bread usually doesn’t.
But then my homemade bread beats anything I can buy hands down in terms of taste. In terms of cost…not so much, if one considers labor in addition to ingredients.
@Jackinga, it’s interesting that staling is caused by crystallization of the disrupted flour cells but the crystallization of the water they contain doesn’t contribute.
@btwonder Starch is composed primarily of two very high molecular weight polysaccarides, amylose (~20-25%) and amylopectin (~75-80%). The amylose is pretty much a linear polymer of glucose moieties with 1,4-alpha linkages, while the amylopectin, which is also primarily formed from glucose moieties has both 1,4-alpha glucose and 1,6-alpha glucose linkages. The amylose is linear while the amylopectin is highly branched. In most starches the amylopectin has a much, much higher molecular weight than the amylose, thus though there is more amylopectin by weight, there are far more amylose molecules.
The amylose forms semicrystalline structures by hydrogen bonding with other amylose molecules. The amylopectin? Not so much.
Above about 80°C in water, wheat starch begins to rapidly absorb water, swelling the wheat cell enormously as the water breaks up the semicrystalline amylose by replacing the amylose-amylose hydrogen bonds with amylose-water hydrogen bonds. At some point the cell walls of the wheat flour burst exuding the now “gelatinized” starches.
microscopic video of gelatinizating wheat cells
On cooling, though the cells have been disrupted and much of the starch exuded, the amylose in the starch will start to re-associate with other amylose molecules and expel the amylose-water hydrogen bonds. This is retrogradation.
The crystallization of water as when ice forms plays no part of this process of retrogradation.
However, that being said, if a non-retrograded bread is quick frozen, then the realignment of the amylose molecules is greatly inhibited and the amylose-water hydrogen bonds of a fresh cooked bread are preserved. So staling is stalled pretty much.
Here then is a pictorial representation of this process as taught by a well-known cooking school.
A Tasting of Culinary Science—Starch
That’s like picking your favorite child.
@ircon96 Picking a favourite child is way easier.
@yakkoTDI I had a feeling someone was gonna say that!
Naan.
/image naan
@Euniceandrich The first thing the /image coughed up was a real hairball.
@werehatrack I had to give up on /giphy for this one.
Dwarf bread. A starving man who eats just one crumb will not be hungry for days. And it is a fearsome weapon. Dwarven museums are full of legendary loaves that were wielded in historic battles.
Focaccia, clearly. And what fool put Ciabatta as an option?
I love zucchini bread but it always amazes me how much sugar is in it. Apple bread is very good to. A local hospital makes some of the best apple bread I’ve ever had. I eat every time I’m there.
My (late) sister-in-law was from Finland. She used to make a traditional braided cardamom-spiced bread called Pulla. My all-time favorite.
@macromeh Pulla is amazing.
Of course, you already knew that.
But for anyone who’s never had cardamom in their bread, it’s worth searching for. (and it’s been way too long since I’ve made it)
Greek breads, Vasilopita (New Years Bread), Tsoureki (Easter Bread)… toasted with butter, miss them…
@gfreek Are you by any chance Greek?
Brioche loaf. Love it toasted.
For sandwiches, except they shrunk it from 16 oz to 14 and now it isn’t as tall as they kept the length, Walmart bakery made Italian.
Cinnamon and raisin for toast.
One of my favorites not already mentioned is pumpkin bread
/giphy pumpkin
Brioche is one of the best.
Jewish Rye with seeds
Jewish Rye with seeds
The Danish rye bread my grandmother used to get from her local Chicago bakery
Frog Bread
No frogs were harmed in the making this bread.