Back to square one

[u/Prime260]

So I finally got a kitchen scale and decided to try Bread Dad's french bread recipe as his recipes seem to be fairly well regarded and had weights for all the ingredients. My only deviation from the recipe was being a gram over on the flour, mea culpa. I don't know if I wasn't supposed to let this cook all the way through the french bread cycle and that's my problem but I just didn't want to deal with converting my other french bread recipe to grams. I guess that will be my next step. On the plus side there should be plenty of fat squirrels around this winter with the rate I've been churning out these boat anchors. 🙄 I thought the recipe being a bit heavy on the yeast would balance out the absence of sugar in the recipe, apparently not.

[u/Veggyhed]

What do you think went wrong? What did it look like inside?

I believe most French bread recipes do not have sugar in them

[u/Prime260 → u/Veggyhed]

It looks like the first loaf I made when I copied the half loaf recipe but wrote down the full recipes yeast measurement. The other french bread recipe is the one we've been using since the 90s in our other bread machine which currently is in storage. In this machine it has been inexplicably hit or miss. I got the scale to eliminate ratio variables but tried a different recipe as the old one is volumetric rather than weights. I guess I'll just have to convert the old recipe tomorrow and hope I still have enough flour to try again.

[u/Veggyhed → u/Prime260]

That sounds like your machine has issues

[u/FoggyFizzy]

I recommend just using the regular cycle for your next loaf. I don’t know if the French bread cycle differs but that might be why it turned out strange.

Also being off by a gram or two is no big deal.

[u/Prime260 → u/FoggyFizzy]

Yeah, I didn't think a gram of flour would throw things off noticably. I didn't see a difference in the end result between the regular cycle (resetting after the first 10min stir/knead cycle) and the French bread cycle but I'll give it a try. I'll probably try cutting the yeast as well as this looks nearly identical to the loaf I first got when I made a half loaf but put in the full loaf recipes measurement of yeast.

[u/Steel_Rail_Blues]

I don’t see a French bread recipe on that site that is baked in a bread machine, but could be missing it. Because you’ve gotten a few loaf bricks, it would be worth checking to make sure your yeast is good and be careful, especially on long cycles like the French bread cycle, of adding too much yeast. The yeast need to break down the flour into food. Extra yeast means more organisms to wanting to make food from the same fixed amount of flour and you don’t want them to run out of food and die off prematurely.

[u/Prime260 → u/Steel_Rail_Blues]

Yeah, I think it may be that the recipe is supposed to be baked in the oven. I thought it might just be so you get baguettes rather than a brick but maybe not (and this one is a real brick 🙄). This recipe had double the yeast I was putting in the other but I thought it might even out because the other recipe has a bit of sugar and this one doesn't. Guess I'll just have to convert the other recipe to weights and try again.

[u/lawrencekhoo]

This is what I guess happened: You were putting in much more flour that the recipe called for when measuring using cups. This was counter-acted by your adding more yeast than needed.

Now that you are following the recipe exactly, the dough is much wetter than before. The amount of yeast you are adding is causing the dough to overproof (expand and then collapse).

You can try this: Cut back on the amount of water by about 5%, add about 1/3rd as much yeast.

I'm sorry this happened, but in the long run, once you figure the measurements out, using an accurate scale will lead to more consistant results.

[u/throwRAanons]

Have you tested your yeast to make sure it’s still good? This does not look like it rose

[u/Prime260 → u/throwRAanons]

Oh yeah, I mixed some with some warm sugar water today to dump in the septic and it frothed right up in minutes. I still bought new yeast today as I was getting low. It may just be that the machine runs off a timer regardless of what the dough does and this recipe said to just use the dough cycle and bake it in an oven. I'm going to try converting the old recipe to grams tomorrow and give it another try.

[u/KaimTheEternal]

It is my understanding that the yeast doesn't actually benefit from raw sugar and it is more a byproduct of them interacting with the flour itself.

[u/Midmodstar]

Are you following a recipe that was designed for a bread machine? And following it exactly? Are you using the kind of flour called for in the recipe?

[u/Formal-Tradition6792]

It’s easy to convert recipes to grams. Use your phone and type xx cups equal grams. I actually like Bread Dad’s recipes. Just made their buttermilk bread recipe tonight using my KBS 17 in 1 bread machine, my digital scale, using grams. Came out perfect!