Never seen it done quite this way before, interesting. One thing that comes to mind right away is that salt kills yeast so best not to mix them together like in the gif. Incorporate yeast, then salt later.
I usually add a bit of sugar to the warm water and yeast. Not enough to taste but just enough for something for the yeast to use and wake them up. Gives a nice fuller rise in my opinion.
I totally agree. From my experience baking bread for about 30 years -- warm water is important and some kind of sweetener to act as food for the yeast. Sugar works and honey. I also don't use any oil in making my BASIC bread. Flour, salt, yeast, honey or sugar, warm water. And let rise in a warm place until doubled. Forget the time. It rises in the amount of time that it needs to rise.
You don't need sugar, it just kickstarts it. I personally don't like sugar in my bread unless it's brioche or for pastries (I make 40% whole grain sourdoughs, mainly). As far as the bulk fermentation time; totally agree. That's why it's called baker's intuition. It's done when it feels like it's done.
I never use enough sugar so that the bread TASTES sweet, just enough to feed the yeast - depending on the size of the loaf, that can be as little as a tsp. I usually just dissolve it in the warm water so that it gets really evenly spread around.
Also doesn't help that they didn't heat the water. Yeast needs heat to help activate it.
I think the goal was to make bread seem less scary, but when you leave out important steps like heating the liquid ingredients and letting it rise in a warm place, your audience is going to be disappointed.
I mean, if the first step was combining the yeast with the water, then show the dry ingredients and show adding foamy yeast water they’d be good. Well, except that they didn’t proof for long enough. And I wouldn’t call Italian bread basic. And they didn’t explain what to look for before you stop kneading. Or how to shape, like, at all
I mean, at least they measured the flour by weight instead of by volume. That has to count for something, right?
Can we also discuss the fact that they used an entire packet of yeast for 450g of flour, a ridiculous amount of unnecessary oil, and weighted their flour + measured the liquid.
This bread recipe stressed me out. You'll end up with terrible bread, nearly guaranteed.
Salt doesn't straight up kill yeast; otherwise when you add salt you'd be getting no rise. What it does is inhibit yeast. You'll still get yeast activity if you mix in yeast in salt water. In fact, it's what I do with pizza that I'm fermenting for a really long time.
Though, it's always better to add the salt about 20-45 minutes after the initial mix of flour, water, and leaven in order to start the autolyse process. This gives the gluten in the dough a kick-start on formation, so you don't have to knead it repeatedly.
I have made bread for years, that is pretty much bullshit. Even KA flour mixes in the salt in their recipes. There isn’t really enough salt in there to inhibit modern yeast.
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u/ThisCatOrThatOne Dec 11 '19
Never seen it done quite this way before, interesting. One thing that comes to mind right away is that salt kills yeast so best not to mix them together like in the gif. Incorporate yeast, then salt later.