[bluesman]

The King Arthur Bread Flour works great for pizza dough and with the addition of VWG , I think there's a better rise to the dough.
Plus the texture of the crust is much better.
I want to try some sourdough using KA flour.

[morticaixavier]

The King Arthur Bread Flour works great for pizza dough and with the addition of VWG , I think there's a better rise to the dough.
Plus the texture of the crust is much better.
I want to try some sourdough using KA flour.

I grew up in VT and never knew there was any other kind of flour besides King Arthur (sort of) but it is great in everything. I have done sourdough with it and it was great. I just used the AP which is fortified with some malted barley etc.

[tschmidlin]

I baked a loaf yesterday after picking up some gluten, but I ended up not using it.  My standard recipe uses 50/50 bread/AP flour, so I upped it to 75/25 bread/AP to see what happened.  It came out much chewier than usual, not to the point of being bad but not the way my family likes it, so I'll probably go back to 50/50 and won't use gluten.

That being said, I want to add some whole wheat flour to the recipe, maybe even a lot of whole wheat flour.  I imagine swapping out some or all of the AP flour and adding some gluten will help.  Someone around here must have experience with this . . .

[denny]

Around here, chewy is the Holy Grail of bread!  But it's good to know what you like and how to achieve it.

[tschmidlin]

Around here, chewy is the Holy Grail of bread!  But it's good to know what you like and how to achieve it.

That recipe is plenty chewy at 50/50 and with the method I use (food processor with a dough blade, kneaded, two rises).  Although I make an English muffin bread too that is much more crumby/less chewy, and that is very popular.  Damn, now I'm hungry for some bread.

[denny]

I used a food processor for the first few years, but it's all by hand now.  I found that for me it works just as well and there's less cleanup.

[euge]

My mother used to make that crumbly bread. I don't think she intended it to come out that way but it always did. Taste was great but made for terrible sandwiches. Fall apart in your hands. Toasted up fantastically and was hearty with breakfast- dunking in egg etc...

I use food processor too. My eye is on a stand mixer.

[punatic]

My wife gave me a KitchenAid mixer the first Christmas we were married.  That dough hook is worth its weight in gold.  13 years and thousands of loaves (and tons of sausage) later that mixer is still running like new.

That was the Christmas I gave her a set of Wusthof knives.  Man was that a good idea too. An artist needs good tools... but I think there's another thread out there about that.

[MrNate]

I have the kitchenaid, but the dough hook gets all bent up with bread dough. I've just been using the regular mixing blade to mix everything up and then kneading.

[morticaixavier]

I have the kitchenaid, but the dough hook gets all bent up with bread dough. I've just been using the regular mixing blade to mix everything up and then kneading.

your dough hook actually bends? I have never had that happen. it's quarter inch steel isn't it? oh I guess there are those plastic ones. You can get just the dough hook in the white enamel finish or the plain steel finish I think. or maybe a set of the beater, whisk and dough hook. I start with the dough hook and finish by hand. makes me feel like I am working at it.

[denny]

I just wish my kitchen was big enough to have a place to store a stand mixer!

[morticaixavier]

I just wish my kitchen was big enough to have a place to store a stand mixer!

Oh it is so worth the counter space you have to give up! I use mine for bread, pasta, cakes, shredding large quantities of cheese/veg the list goes on. I have a tiny house (less than 500sq feet) but the kitchen is most of that so I guess I don't mind giving up a little. You can even get a grain mill for it although I hear it's not great for brewing grains (To fine a grind, to much damage to the husk)

[tschmidlin]

I'd love a stand mixer too, but haven't been able to justify it yet.  It's on sale at costco right now though   Still SWMBO is a fan of having the counters clear, and the cabinets are getting pretty full . . .

The food processor works well, and I'd rather spend my time cleaning it (putting it in the dishwasher) than kneading dough forever.  But that's me.

[MrNate]

I have the kitchenaid, but the dough hook gets all bent up with bread dough. I've just been using the regular mixing blade to mix everything up and then kneading.

your dough hook actually bends? I have never had that happen. it's quarter inch steel isn't it? oh I guess there are those plastic ones. You can get just the dough hook in the white enamel finish or the plain steel finish I think. or maybe a set of the beater, whisk and dough hook. I start with the dough hook and finish by hand. makes me feel like I am working at it.

Mine is the plain aluminum or whatever potmetal it is... Definitely not steel. And yes, it bends. I figure it's more for pastry dough than anything, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, I think I might make some more tonight.

[punatic]

I'd love a stand mixer too, but haven't been able to justify it yet.  It's on sale at costco right now though   Still SWMBO is a fan of having the counters clear, and the cabinets are getting pretty full . . .

The food processor works well, and I'd rather spend my time cleaning it (putting it in the dishwasher) than kneading dough forever.  But that's me.

I looked at the one on sale at Costco today.  It is the right one to get.  Very sturdy.  The mixing bowl drops down - the head does not pivot up, and it has a 575W motor ( 0.77 HP).

Bending dough hook?  wow... I make some heavy breads with mine, so much so that the motor nearly comes to a stop with the effort.  13 years later the original hook has no bending, no dings in the enamel, still in good shape.  Although the machine tends to "walk" a bit when kneading a dense dough.  If it were Hobart sized that wouldn't happen.

My wife got me the mixer because she got tired of me beating the she-it out of the dough on the kitchen counter at all hours of the night.  I used to work shift work at a power plant and would make bread when I got home.

She also got me the sausage grinder attachment for the PTO port on the mixer head.  Lucky thing!  Few here in Hawaii know what andouille or boudin is.  I've ground close to a ton of sausage with that machine.  I bought a sturdy microwave table for the mixer to live on.  The accessories live in the shelf space underneath of the microwave table.