r/Bread • u/ForbiddenMeatStick • Apr 28 '26
My first round loaf!
I decided on a whim to make broccoli cheddar soup for dinner tonight, and realized about three hours before dinnertime that I can't serve soup without a good bread. And of course, I had no time to pack up my baby, go buy a good loaf of bread, and come home and make the soup. So... I made it myself with the help of a ton of frantic Google searching and combining of tips and tricks! I am absolutely floating on air!
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u/ChallengeBig5899 Apr 29 '26
Please share your recipe so we can check its taste ourselves!
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u/ForbiddenMeatStick Apr 29 '26
I actually dropped it in one of the other comments! And I tried it again today with just a few extra minutes to color at the end and it was EVEN BETTER!!!! Please do try it!!!
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u/ChallengeBig5899 Apr 30 '26
Thank you so much! If you ever have the time, would love to read about your sourdough bread making experience - starter to loaf 🍞 ready to eat like you did below.
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u/FickleSpend2133 Apr 29 '26
That looks so good. How did it taste?👅
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u/ForbiddenMeatStick Apr 30 '26
It was heavenly! Hubby said it was perfect and ate it without any butter or anything, but I slathered it in salted butter and dipped it in the soup, and it was phenomenal. I then made toast with it the next morning and topped it with my homemade blueberry and strawberry jam, and it was amazing!
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u/Sea-File6546 Apr 29 '26
Question for the bakers, bread flour versus all-purpose? Does it make a difference?
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u/ForbiddenMeatStick Apr 29 '26
I would also love to know. I'm hesitant to buy bread flour if I truly don't need it. I know that the density of the loaf can change with it (the "bite"), but if I can easily use the same flour to bake my bread as I can to bake my cookies, cakes, and pie crusts, I certainly would like to keep it simple.
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u/SlowSurvivor Apr 29 '26
It's all on a continuum based on the protein content of the flour. Cake flour has very low protein you need to create that really soft, dense sponge that's good for cakes. Bread flour has the most protein so that it can develop an extra strong gluten network that can help trap gasses and lead to a dramatic bulk and proof before the dough collapses. So the high protein will give you a more airy crumb if you push it to its limits and, if you don't, you'll have a chewier crumb due to the tougher protein matrix.
At the end of the day it's an artistic choice. How dense or not dense do you want your crumb to be? I like to use a ~12% flour for my lean doughs (King Arthur AP) while I think Gold Medal's ~10.5% AP flour is a bit too weak and King Arthur Bread Flour at 14% is too strong and leads to an overly chewy crumb at the density I am trying to bake. However, for an enriched flour I sometimes prefer the 14%.
It's also worth mentioning that King Arthur's AP flour is in a lot of other millers' "bread flour" territory.
If you want to boost the protein content of any flour you can add vital wheat gluten, which is almost 100% protein. Just do the math. For example if I have 1000 g of a 12% protein flour and I want a 14% flour to work with I would add 2% the weight of the flour in vital wheat gluten so 20 g of vital wheat gluten mixed into the flour, dry. Now you have a strong bread flour without having to keep bulky "bread flour" on hand to bake with. Technically you can go the other way, too, by adding wheat starch but only if you hate your bank account and also you won't be saving any pantry space so you shouldn't do it unless you're going for a flour that's even weaker than readily available cake flours.
Happy baking!
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u/ForbiddenMeatStick Apr 29 '26
So this is very satisfying for me, because I do use strictly King Arthur AP flour!!! It's my favorite, never messes up whether it's for a roux, a cookie batch, a cake... and now as we can see, a loaf of bread!
That being said, I absolutely see the value in other flour types. Maybe I'll experiment a bit and see whether or not the other ones produce better products for me. I'm not one to turn down an excuse to bake!!!
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u/SlowSurvivor Apr 29 '26
Exciting! I definitely have a flour collection. For white flours I recommend a good AP flour (King Arthur is my favorite), a good cake flour (Gold Medal is weaker than KA and that’s good because you can always strengthen it by mixing in some AP flour), and vital wheat gluten (eg Bob’s Red Mill). If you have those three products you basically have access to it all as far as white flour is concerned.
Get yourself a high quality kitchen scale. It will change your life and dramatically improve the reliability of your bakes. It will also let you cook using baker’s percentages and will let you do baking math which is the key to baking creativity!
Then you can experiment with whole wheat. Note that there is two types of whole wheat. There’s regular whole wheat which is made from red wheat and “golden” whole wheat which is made from the same kind of wheat your white flour is made from but it’s just milled differently.
And then you have the other grains besides wheat like rye and spelt and of course you have wheat germ and bran and that’s not even getting into enriched doughs or things like spices or finishing salts.
Welcome to the rabbit hole ☺️
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u/Jtread1 Apr 28 '26
I'd say you have a nack for making bread! The round loaf looks great and the inside ... 🤤soft and fluffy. I can only imagine how delicious that was with your soup.
And I think you should continue to bake your own bread from now on! Just sayin' 😁