I mixed the flour and yeast together and added water which I took the temperature of and it was reading 76 degrees F.
I added in the rest of the flour.
I used the dough hook on my stand up mixer and ran it for a few minutes until it all looked good and doughy. It was pretty sticky.
The box said that the dough would double in a size in an hour. Since it was a relatively cool day, I put the dough in a bowl, covered it with a towel and left it in the oven at its lowest setting.
After an hour, the dough had risen about 5% in size.
So… I was left with a sticky, glutinous mass that didn’t turn out very breadlike.
I’m assuming that some step along the way was fatally wrong. But which one?
I usually use warmer water (90-110). You might try turning the oven on for a minute or two, then off, then put the bread in. You really only want about 80 degrees.
My guess is bad yeast, although the low water temperature probably didn’t help any. Shoot for about 100-110 degree water (no hotter) when developing the yeast, and let the dough rise in a warmish (80 degrees is good, as stated above) location. If it’s too cold, it won’t rise well, although you should still see SOME rise.
It might be that the oven was too hot, but you did see some rise, so it might just have been that you didn’t give it enough time.
I think the instructions in many recipes are wildly optimistic, an hour to double in size isn’t much time. I’d have been inclined to leave it and see if it eventually did double in size, in two hours or four hours or whatever.
I start my bread off with cold water and let it rise overnight in a cool room, it takes longer but it does rise.
If you’re aiming for optimum time, then by all means use warm water and rise in a warm room, but there are lots of variables in making bread and time is definitely one of them.
Well, geeze, like everyone else mentioned, you alternately froze and overheated your dough. I always proof my yeast in 110 degree water (mix the two together and let sit for 10 minutes or so, during which you’ll actually see the yeast working and creating life) before adding it to the flour and other ingredients.
Unless of course, I’m using my bread machine, but who the heck knows what goes on in there anyway.
::bare, who still thinks that the idea of throwing all those ingredients into a bread machine and slamming the lid, only to have a fresh loaf of bread in an hour IS MAGIC!::
I remember a few years ago at work a group of women were talking about how Katrina’s new bread maker didn’t work although she ahd followed the instructions exactly. I butted in to say, “The yeast is past its expiry date. Go to Woolies and buy some fresh bread yeast and you will have a lovely loaf for breakfast.”
She thought I was a genius because I was right, but it had happened to me once.
I think a lot of people have their first loaf fail because of old yeast. Always get fresh yeast.
The test I use for temperature is to run some of the water across my wrist. It should feel neither too hot nor too cold, but rather feel like body temperature water. If I’m going to be putting the water into my massive ceramic breadbowl, I’ll make it a little hotter, since the bowl will cool th ewater down pretty quickly.
The lowest setting on my oven is about 175. WAY too hot.
I put my oven on the lowest setting for SIXTY SECONDS just to warm it up a bit; probly around 90 degrees, max. Then I raise the dough in there.
The reason you got a 5% rise is because you had a few minutes of optimum rising temp as the oven heated from cold to warm to hot enough to kill the yeast.
Another option is to turn the oven light on but not the heat. The light will give the oven just a bit of warmth but not get too hot. I usually let my bread rise in the oven this way.
I’ll go with the yeast might be old, plus the water wasn’t warm enough, and the oven temp during rising might have hurt you too.
I use 00 degree water. When it’s time for the first rise, I boil some water and pour it into a pie pan, and place that on the floor of my microwave, then put the bowl with the dough in. Don’t turn the microwave on though!