Thursday, November 08, 2018

comparing 3 breads

Of possible interest to Charles, who likes baking:






4 comments:

Charles said...

I've noticed that Brits seem to say "prove" rather than "proof." Interesting.

Also interesting how they were trying to be nice about the gluten-free bread but kept calling it "cake" (there's a reason cake has the texture it does, and it is largely because of the flour used) and then didn't pick it as their go-to bread at the end. That's because IT'S NOT REAL BREAD. Holy crap, unless you have Celiac Disease, you should not be using gluten-free flour to make bread. All that butter and stuff that they had to add to the "bread" to give it richness makes it far less healthy than just the plain white bread. And gluten doesn't make you "sluggish" or whatever other crap you think it does. It's a protein, that's it. If breads and other gluten-rich foods don't work for you, it is 99.9% of the time not the gluten. It's probably the hyper-processed white flour that has had all of the nutrients removed, leaving nothing but the starch/sugars. If you want healthy, bake with 100% whole wheat, or spelt, or another "ancient grain" flour--and leave the poor gluten alone!

OK, rant over. Sorry, I just have strong feelings about the subject.

Oh, and on a separate note, I think they should have explained why they didn't knead the flatbread. That is, I think they should have had a better explanation of the differences between baking soda and yeast as leavening agents. (And if you're wondering, you don't generally knead soda bread because 1) baking soda begins to work immediately and does not continue to create gas over time (as yeast does), so the longer you mess around with the dough the less rise you will get, and 2) traditionally, soda bread dough was too soft to knead properly anyway. You want everything good and mixed, but you want to handle it as little as possible and get it baking as soon as you can. If you're interested, I can do a traditional Irish soda bread on the spot for Thanksgiving, instead of the yeast bread I had in mind. It's pretty freaking awesome, if I do say so myself.)

Kevin Kim said...

I can't speak for the others, but I, for one, will be happy with whatever bread you bring.

Charles said...

So I've put it up for a vote. Tom will reply with one or two words, and we will hear from Wee Patty in about a week or so.

Kevin Kim said...

You know us all so well.