I have only rarely used fresh yeast, as it isn’t nearly as easy to get.
My theory is that fresh yeast is “traditional”, it was avaliable before dry yeast. So some people prefer it because of that, but honestly, when I’ve made the same recipe with one or the other I myself have not noticed any difference in quality.
There may be subltleties in quality I’m not aware of though, but on the whole, dry yeast is much easier to keep and use.
We live two blocks from a bakery, so I don’t make bread very often now. I either get a loaf of sourdough or their campagnola. They also have fresh croissants, baguettes, etc. About the only bread I make myself is a batter bread that has oregano and Parmesan in it: fragrant and wonderful when toasted. For commercial bread, you can’t beat Dave’s Killer Bread. I think it’s only available in the western states, however.
Chefguy’s batter bread is great.
I’ve been varying the basic no-knead recipe as my whims direct. Some not so great results, if I’m honest, as I got very excited about adding seeds and wholeish grains, and have been adding too many. My favourite additions are sesame/sunflower/poppy/flax seeds, rolled oats, roasted brown rice powder from the Japanese supermarket (usually used in genmaicha tea), various other flours (I have teff and chickpea at the moment). I keep the seeds in the freezer, as the oils become rancid quickly. So you see, my bread is pretty full, and ends up quite dense.
I think I need a more structured, glutenous dough to stand up to the mixed in stuff. Also, you can buy gluten! Bob’s Red Mill brand, called “vital wheat gluten” - a few Tbs mixed in, especially if you’re not using a lot of white flour, really improves the texture.
I’ve been thinking about a stand mixer. I love the result from wet doughs like the no-knead and batter breads, but it’s hard to make by hand. Also, the no-knead technique of baking in a preheated, covered pot gives beautiful crust and rise.
Oh! And I even tried to make injera this week. TRIED. My Eritrean friend admits to buying it premade, so I was proud of the effort. I let it sit for 3 days, and it only slightly foamed up. Maybe add a sourdough starter next time. The result turned out a bit more like teff crepes… I think I poured the batter in too thin, and had better results with more in the pan, at a lower temperature. Shiro, though, that shit’s EASY, and SO yummy. Tips from said friend include, caramelize the onion thoroughly, and cook your berbere in oil for a good long time, like 15 minutes, before adding other ingredients.
I didn’t know Panera sold whole loaves of bread. I haven’t been there much. I may have to pick up my own sourdough after work today 
Thanks. My mother used to make it, so it’s a real comfort food for me. When I inherited her cookbook, I found that the recipe had been cut from an old magazine, probably in the 50s or early 60s.
My wife’s parents have been gardening a bit, and they sent me a zucchini with the suggestion that I could try making zucchini bread. I had never heard of zucchini bread, but what the hell? I tried the first recipe that Google spat out, and it was pretty damned good. I’m not sure what the zucchini added, because the bread doesn’t taste anything like fried zucchini, which is the only way I’ve eaten it before. There is a strange spiciness which I can’t account for even in the fact that the recipe calls for the most cinnamon I’ve ever seen in a quickbread (not to mention more sugar by weight than flour). Really, we’re actually talking about cake here, but some of these cakes get labeled breads for some reason. Carrot cake, somehow, gets to be a cake.
Chefguy’s recipe reminds me of what I did last week, which was to make pizza dough in the bread machine and then instead of stopping it, I went ahead and let it bake.
I always put oregano, basil and a little wheat germ in the dough, so it came out a fantastic herb yeast bread. I think the olive oil also gave it some je ne sais quoi. I cut it in thick slices, toasted them lightly, and we ate it with spaghetti, gumbo and some other dish I made that required bread. Man, it was good.
Me, I’ve been on a Japanese-style bread kick lately. Surprisingly easy to make an amazing loaf (as compared to trying to make my own stupid baguette, ugh.).
I’ve been using this recipe: Home Cooking In Montana: Japanese Milk Bread... using the tangzhong method.
Neither do mine, but I found some at an Orowheat thrift store.
I used to love the stuff, but maybe they changed it because I wasn’t impressed.
A few years after we got married my wife started to bake bread - she even sold some to restaurants. Alas writing pays better. She made regular loafs and challah also.
Best commercial bread I know of now comes from Costco of all places, who gets it from a local bakery. Wonderful thick crust.
Dave’s is what Orowheat and Roman Meal pretend to be.
50/50 stone ground whole wheat flour and unbleached white flour. I/2 cup honey. 1/4 cup molasses. 1/2 cup sunflower seed. 1/4 cup sesame seed. 2 tablespoons salt. 4 cups water, and a bit of warm water to dissolve the yeast. This recipe benefits from lots of kneading and double rising. Dark crusty moist rich fragrant all dripping with butter…
This I am going to have to try.
Laws, I forgot the oil, 1/2 cup cold pressed unrefined corn oil, it tastes like sweet corn right off the grill drowning in butter, mixed in with the other ingredients of course…
I’ve noticed that whole wheat flour forms a nice elastic dough very quickly, and yet recipes for wheat bread generally call for at least as much other flour. Bread I’ve made from just whole wheat flour has certainly not been terrible, and the other flour isn’t needed to create structure. Apparently it’s just universally held that whole wheat flour bread should not be whole-whole wheat bread.
My altitude may have something to do with this, but the only way I can get my whole wheat bread to rise properly is to add 1/4 cup of wheat gluten to the flour. Otherwise, the bread turns out dense and crumbly, which isn’t what I usually want.
To make my bread, I melt about 1/2 T of sugar in about 1/2 c of water, cool it to about 100 degrees, and then stir in the yeast to proof. I mix that into about 4 cups of whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup of gluten, 1/4 cup of whole flax meal, 3/4 cup of soy milk, 3/4 cup of water, 1 T of sugar, 1 1/2 tsp. salt, and 2 T of butter and knead it, adding however much flour it takes before getting to the right consistency. That rises for about an hour (at 5,000 feet) to double in size. Then I punch it down, let it rest about 10 minutes, shape it, and put it into a loaf pan to rise for about another 45 minutes or so. I slash the loaf and bake it at 400 for 45 minutes, turning it out of the pan to let the bottom crust brown on the pizza stone in the oven for about the last 5-10 minutes.
This is…just not true.
Ignoring any flavor profile stuff (which is basically a matter of taste), bread you make with whole wheat flour will generally rise less and be more dense than bread make with white flour. You can’t just substitute and expect your bread to come out as well, so many recipes do a blend to try to mitigate the issue. No, bread made with whole wheat won’t be “terrible” but it won’t be as good either, unless you take some other steps.
There’s a fairly scientific demonstration and some advice here.
Bread had some great songs! And David Gates’s voice was…uh, oh.
Never mind. :o
Well, that does make a much clearer picture of what’s going on. The one time I actually made a loaf that was entirely whole wheat, I got a hell of a rise out of it but suspected it was due to the sugars in the caramelized onions I added and the fact that I forgot to add salt, which is supposed to have a tempering effect. Generally, though, I made pita as wheat-only, and found it to behave admirably while being kneaded and rolled out, though it was generally a drier and grainier product when cooked (though quite tasty in its own way).
I buy the loaves of frozen dough, then bake them myself. They’re half the price of pre-baked loaves, but take almost no effort, and come out nearly as good as completely homemade.
I’m just disappointed that they don’t sell the whole wheat version any more (at least, not in any stores near me).