Bread wont rise

[Helsbells]

hi everyone,

I have tried to make bread many times, and every time it comes out hard as a stone. It hardly rises.

A few days ago I made a white loaft, when I left it to rise the first time it did actually rise a fair amount, but it hardly rose at all in the oven.

Today it was even worse. The dough hardly rose at all for the first proving, dont know why, did exactly the same as the other day. And it is literally like a stone. I have cooked it now, and its hardly any bigger than the origional piece of dough!!

What am I doing wrong?
I am using fast acting yeast.

My main worry is that it could be our oven. The top temparature is 190 and after that is a picture of a loaf of bread. I turn the dial to the loaf of bread, but is this hot enough? I assume its 200?

Any help would be much appreciated, I refuse to give up, but its gonna cost a fortune in flour if it keeps coming out like this!

[pureportugal]

i've completely given up on baking yeasted bread, i'm too impatient and even when i did spend time kneading and proving, it always came out like a brick anyway.

now i use a soda bread recipe with self-raising flour and bicarb of soda. probably very cheating method but makes lovely bread, even in our very old wood range that never gets up to a really good temperature. i haven't tried it in a loaf tin though, i just make cob shaped bread.

[Helsbells]

mmm sounds interesting,
Could you share the recipe?

[pureportugal]

it's from the "beat candida cookbook" by erica white
i started making it when i was on an anti-candida diet and everyone liked it so much it's the only bread i make now

yoghurt soda bread

1lb / 0.5kg flour
2tsp sodium bicarbonate
0.5 pint / 300ml natural yoghurt
0.25 pint / 150ml warm water

preheat oven to 200 deg / gas 6
sift the flour and mix in the bicarb
stir in the yoghurt & warm water
mix together well and turn out onto well-floured surface
shape into one large or two small loaves (no kneading necessary)
cut a cross on top
bake for 30 mins then turn oven down to 180 deg / gas 4 for another 20 mins
to test if it's ready, tap the bottom of the loaf and it should sound hollow

i've experimented with all kinds of flours and they've all turned out well. also experiment with adding nuts, seeds, oats, onion, cheese, herbs, etc. favourites in this household are raisin and mixed spice, and chopped olives with tblsp of olive oil in the mix.

edited to add: it's probably best if you bake it correctly as in the recipe, but it's always turned out well in our unpredictable old range - though i usually have to turn it upside-down halfway through cooking! can't wait til we get a new rayburn :)

[Rosendula]

I was on one of my rants to OH the other day on the subject of bread. Like you, my bread was always rock hard and I gave up even trying to make bread for many, many years. I was always told I wasn't kneading it enough, or not kneading it hard enough, that I'm too light-handed. I knew that wasn't the case. I was not just kneading it, I was beating the sh!t out of it! (Sorry, couldn't think of a polite way to put it). The recipe I was using was the one I was taught at school - using fast-acting yeast - and that, I believe, was the problem. So try this: get your so-called 'fast acting' yeast, and put it in about 750ml of warm water with a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Give it all a good stir and leave it for a while.

When it's started going nice and frothy, mix in a load of flour until it's like a stiff paste. Put a wet cloth over it and leave it somewhere warm overnight.

*Next morning, take out half a cup of the dough and put that in the fridge*

Add 4 level teaspoons of salt to the bowl, stir well, then add more flour until you have a proper bread dough consistency. Kneading it does help, but isn't really essential if you can stir it well enough. Put this dough into tins, no more than 3/4 filling it. Cover with a wet cloth and leave to rise until doubled in size (or until it looks like it's going to spill over the edge). Then put it carefully in a preheated oven. Don't bang it, or it will collapse and cook hard. I don't know temperatures, but mine goes in on gas 7 for 20 minutes followed by gas 5 for 15 minutes.

* Next time you make bread, forget the yeast. Take the cup of (sour-) dough out of the fridge in the morning. Mix that with the warm water and sugar and leave overnight, just like you did the yeasty water.


Edited the amount of water - mixing up my fl.oz and ml.

[Green Aura]

Rock hard bread is usually down to the kneading (if I remember correctly - OH uses his breadmaker these days so I've not had much practice recently). You can be too vigorous with it - the people who say you can take all your frustrations out while kneading are wimps. You need steady regular pressure, not beat the crap out of it.

Are you leaving it long enough to prove? It may be that if your kitchen's cold you need to put it somewhere warmer or leave it longer, overnight if necessary.

I don't know what flour you use, but replacing 1 cup of w/meal with white flour will give a better rise and a softer crust.

The other thing you can try is putting a pan of water in the base of the oven when you switch it on - steam baking your loaf will help the crust stay softer.

[StripyPixieSocks]

Ok... I have a few questions:

Is it warm enough?
Are you putting the correct sugar and salt quantities in?
Are you using strong white flour (Bread Flour) or just plain?
Is the fast-bake yeast the correct one for the way you are making bread?

The reason I ask this is, if it's not warm enough the yeast won't wake up... well... would you get out of bed it if wasn't warm enough?

Alot of people think missing out the correct salt and sugar will just result in healthy bread... it doesn't it just doesn't make the yeast work as they have no food to turn into C02. Leaving out or altering the salt and sugar in any way will almost certainly leave your bread struggling... also putting too much salt in can kill yeast as well.

My Mom kept telling me about her bread disasters and I went through the recipe on the phone to her several times before she mentioned the brand of flour she was using and the type... plain old plain flour. She had problems like yours and once she got the correct flour had no problems at all.

We recently bought some rather dreadful Allinsons easy bake yeast that comes in a little round tin... it went in the bin with some force as it is utterly useless for ANY bread making purposes. We went back to using the Easy Bake yeast from Dove Cottage which is in little fine pieces, those stupid round balls that Allinson make are rubbish!

As mentioned above, kneading is essential as is leaving it to rise somewhere warm then shaping it and then leaving it to rise a second time.

We always cook our bread at 200 degrees but 190 should be no problem at all!

I gave up years ago after using the allinson type yeast and didn't try again for years... I now make bread almost every day, you'll get the knack eventually :)

[Sally Jane]

Just as another alternative, PatR posted a really simple soda bread recipe last month in the What's in The Pot section, under the title 'My Soda Bread'.
It is dead simple and I use it all the time. I use a little more fat than she recommends, and have tried several varitions on the theme, including adding cinnamon and dried fruit, or various herbs. I cook it at Gas 6 for about 30 mins, usually alongside something else to save energy.
The recipe has never let me down, and I no longer bother with yeast bread-it's just not worth the trouble.
I love its simplicity, reliability and versatility and strongly recommend you look at it.

[Rosendula]

Just remembered this thread that might interest you.

[Clara]

I don't know about the yeast thing and I just use the flour in the shop, seems there is no such thing as speciality bread flour here.

However....I do know that when I started making bread and I read something like "leave for an hour, until doubled in size", I would hang on to the first part of the that sentence - expeerience has taught me that the last part is far more important and sometimes it can take considerably longer.

A useful tip I picked up somewhere along the way was to turn on the oven for a minute, turn it off and then put the bread to rise in there, works a treat. And now I just about to try this recipe and I noticed that he says to use a warm bowl - so the kitchenaid bowl is sat atop the jotul.

Good luck

[Graye]

Clara, there IS a good flour for breadmaking in Spain. I always bought mine in Eroski if you are nearish to that one at El Ingenio but I think you can find it in other supermarkets.

It's in a white bag with mainly red but some yellow writing/designs on and I think it's called La Gallina. I'll double check the name when I email a friend later, I know she still buys it.

I always use a breadmaker these days but very often just use it for the kneading and proving bit, baking the loaf in the oven. Given the time spent fiddling around trying to humour a "made from scratch" dough mix into turning out into something reasonable I would go for the breadmaker every time! I do sometimes use the breadmaker to make prepared mixes but other times I use strong flour and quick-acting yeast. As long as you keep things quite warm it seems to work much the same either way.

[Clara]

Thanks for the tip, I know the brand but TBH I don't have a problem with the rising of either brown or white bread. Fortunately (!) I am a 3 hour round trip from a big supermarket anyhow!

Back OT, I don't think I would make bread that had to be kneaded too often if I didn't have the KitchenAid to do it for me. If anyone wants a good no-knead wet bread recipe there's a good brown seedy loaf in the Moro cookbook (the second one Casa Moro I think).

Edited to add.....just remembered I have this already scanned so if anyone wants a copy just PM me your email.

[pureportugal]

here's the link to PatR's soda bread

looks interesting but think i'll stick with the soda bread recipe i already use as it seems a little simpler and also is very good for toast the next morning :)

interesting about the yeast "balls" - that's what i used to use with disastrous results before i gave up on making yeasted bread.

think i will give your recipe a go rosendula, looks simple enough for me! but it seems like an awful lot of salt sounds similar to sourdough bread which i keep meaning to have a go at but haven't got around to yet.

[Rosendula]

think i will give your recipe a go rosendula, looks simple enough for me! but it seems like an awful lot of salt

You can adjust the amount of salt to your taste. The recipe I use is adapted from one I found in an old book called "The Self Sufficient Larder" by Mike Fox. He says in it that you don't have to use any salt if you prefer not to, but it tastes better with some in.

On the subject of flour, I only use strong (bread) flour if there's nothing else available. You really don't need strong flour unless you want holey bread. Ordinary flour will make a good loaf - dense, without the holes, but moist and filling. Unfortunately I'm becoming very restricted to whatever flour is available in the supermarkets - the shelf space gets smaller every time I go in there, and it's impossible to get plain wholemeal flour round here these days

[Thomzo]

I can only really talk from breadmaker experience but the way you store your yeast is important. I use the round balls in a tin type yeast, Allinson's is OK but Dove's Farm is better. But keep it in the fridge. I also use about twice as much as recommended in the recipe.

In my experience you can't leave the salt out. I also have Mike Fox's book and have tried not adding salt but the bread doesn't rise as well. I use no more than a tea spoon in a loaf so it's not going to kill you (salt is an important part of the diet just not too much).

Keep at it. When I first bought my breadmaker, I nearly threw it out in disgust but now I use it all the time.

How about trying a packet mix? (Lidl do a good selection). Follow the recipe exactly and see how it comes out. That will give you a clue as to whether it's the ingrediants or the cooker that's the problem.

Good luck
Zoe