• Skua@kbin.earthOP
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    2 days ago

    Certainly! I’ll give the original recipe first, maybe it’ll work better for someone else or someone more experienced can identify something I missed

    Ingredients

    • 600g strong white flour
    • 200g wholemeal flour
    • 200g malted flour
    • 40g finely-chopped dulse (a type of seaweed, other seaweeds can be substituted here)
    • 500ml Colonsay ale (the Colonsay brewery has gone out of business now, but you’re looking for a British-style brown ale that is only lightly-hopped)
    • 100ml water
    • 20g instant yeast
    • 20g salt
    • 60g butter

    Method

    • Mix everything and knead until no longer sticky
    • Cover and leave to proof until doubled in size
    • Knock back and shape into two loaves
    • Cover and leave to double again (described as “at least one hour”)
    • Dust with flour
    • Bake at 200 C for 45 minutes with steam

    But, of course, I found that following this as written didn’t work for me. Maybe it’s a me problem at some point. Changes I made for this loaf were:

    Ingredients

    • Reduce white flour to 400g
    • Replace ale with non-alcoholic ale
    • Reduce salt to 15g to account for reduced flour

    Method

    • Mix to combine and only knead until homogenous
    • Replace first proof with 12 hour cold ferment
    • Second proof took over two hours for me
    • Remove steam source when baking
    • Pronell@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      As someone who has little bread making knowledge, would using a brewing yeast and an alcoholic beer help with the original recipe? Flour content can be modified of course but I’m wondering if a different yeast would perform differently as well.

      • Skua@kbin.earthOP
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        2 days ago

        Alcohol is a waste product that some yeasts produce while eating sugar rather than being something that the yeast feeds on, so I wouldn’t expect it to improve the results here over using a non-alcoholic beer. Normally, fermentation stops when either the yeast is out of sugar to eat or it has produced so much alcohol that the alcohol kills the yeast. Brewing yeasts are of course quite tolerant of alcohol and would probably handle a regular beer in the dough better than other yeasts though

        Trying a brewer’s yeast to bake bread is an interesting idea though. No idea if it would do anything different. I just ordered some brewing yeast yesterday, so I will set a little aside and make two batches of bread to compare when it arrives

        • Pronell@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Nice! I’d be interested to know if it makes a marked difference.

          Me, I’ve made no knead bread, biscuits, and pizza dough, but have consistently failed at keeping sourdough alive or useful. Just knowledge of the basics really.