I read somewhere sugar + fat has a similar pharmacological effect to cocaine, so they are going more for the uppers crowd - maybe a higher margin there ?
I use to work in a bakery in New Zealand and they use butter. They have the best croissant I ever tried. I had to make the breaskfast by myself (scone, donuts, brioche, etc) and was with real butter.
I have a nostalgic love for mantou. The main breakfast food of my childhood. It’s kind of weird, but I like to peel off and eat the “skin” and then eat the fluffy part separately…
It’s a Belgian thing, brioche with pearl sugar! Yum!
I got traumatized by mantou as it was my daily meal while in the hospital… so I associate mantou with hospital/pain/no food!
Huh. The more you learn. I thought the sugar was necessary to feed the yeast - I now realize that’s wrong. (Almost all of my bread machine recipes have a bit of sugar.)
So from this thread, I take it I shouldn’t resume a quest for decent sandwich bread? My bread machine makes middling sandwich bread at best, but it’s still equal to or better than anything I’ve found in Taiwan. But at least a nearby place sells good baguettes. Well, good to my palette, anyway.
Baggete at home
- 700g / 25 Ounces of Strong white bread flour
- 520g / 19 Ounces of Cold Water
- 1tsp / 8g of Salt
- ½tsp / 2g of instant or active dried yeast
- If using fresh Yeast: 8g
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Add the flour, yeast, salt to a bowl, mix together.
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Add the water and bring it all together to a sticky dough as shown.
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Cover the bowl and set the timer for 45 minutes.
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After the 45 minutes take the dough out of the bowl and with wet hands knock the dough back by giving it 5 or 6 turns. Repeat this procedure another 3 times
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After the last 45 minute rise, turn out the dough onto a well floured surface and divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and pre-shape them as shown in the video, cover them with a piece of oiled cling film / plastic wrap and let them relax for 15 minutes.
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After the 15 minutes form the pre-shapes into the baguettes and place them onto the well floured bakers Couche cloth as shown in the video, set the timer for 20 minutes
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After the 20 minutes reset the time for a further 10 to 12 minutes while the oven heats up to 220°C / 420°F / Gas mark 7 to 8, also place a tray of hot water on the bottom shelf of the oven.
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Place the baguettes on lightly greased baking trays, spray with a little water and score the baguettes
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Place the baguettes in the hot oven, spray inside the oven with water as shown, and bake for 16 to 20 minutes, remove oven and place on a wire rack until cool
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I read that flour contains maltose and glucose which is all the yeast needs. I regularly make bread without sugar, usually the no-knead type let it sit over night.
some people still bloom the yeast with warm water and a little sugar. Is a method to know if the yeast is still alive.
Not so much as bread in Taiwan, but still sucks… They don’t add sugar but use cheap flour. German world is not well known for their food products. Their food sucks.
I found dozen others EU countries have better bread. Surprisingly even UK.
Most recipes tell you to put sugar in some water to activate the yeast, or see that the yeast is still alive (active). You can speed up the process of fermentation (rising) by adding sugar, but you can not add more than 2% (relative to the flour weight) of sugar in your recipe, else you need to add extra yeast to compensate. Recipes that have sugar in it for sweeter luxury breads (have mostly also more fat in it). Sugar has the same effect on yeast as salt, it will kill it when used too much, but strangely enough you need salt for the rising and baking process. Sugar is not really needed as starches in the flour will be enough to feed your yeast. The use of fat has no effect on your yeast. It will just soften your bread, will soft longer and will keep a little longer. Baking if done the artisan way is no exact science (although there are some rules to follow), in mass production it may be.
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This is the tastiest “western style” bread recipe I use for in the bread machine:
https://www.yummly.co.uk/recipe/Bread-Machine-Mock-Sour-Dough-Bread-2437757
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That looks like a great recipe. I don’t use a bread machine but I bake bread and also sourdough. The ingredients are similar to a naan recipe that I’ve tried. You might try parts of the batch rolled flat griddled in a hot dry pan for a few minutes on each side.
One year, I went to the baking show in Nangang and was shocked to see it was a chemical additive show. Homemade bread doesn’t keep long so I either have to plan to give some away or freeze some slices.
Are you surprised by that? Why would all the bakeries in Taiwan have similar breads? Nothing is really ‘artisan’ anymore.
Anyways, it’s not only in Taiwan it’s worldwide, small bakeries can not get around it anymore due to labor cost and young people not willing to work nights, holidays and weekends.
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I thought the pendulum had swung back the other way on this. In that there is a bit of an artisan bread revival going on in some countries. People pay up for good sourdough.
Some people, people that can afford it. But, there is industrial ‘artisan’ bread, sourdough that’s made completely on industrial scale with artisan methods, translated to mass production.
But anyways, there are way more bakeries that use additives to offset the methods that they use to bake breads and other baked goods. Bakeries are often just buying frozen dough or par baked frozen goods to meet their demand.