Recipes
After some trial and error I finally cracked the recipe for a soft white loaf using only EF FiberFlour. The answer was to add gluten, so trial and error ended up with 12% to 13% of the weight of the flour, with 80% hydration. I was aiming to make a version of shokupan (Japanese milk bread) which I bake a couple of times a week, but the lack of starch in FF means the yudane or tangzhong (a percentage of the flour gelatinised with boiling water to extend softness) doesn't gel. I did give it a go, though, just out of curiosity, but the loaf remained moist and soft even without the yudane – not as fluffy as some shokupan, which is often very springy, but good enough for me. It has the same crumb texture as a bakery's regular white sandwich loaf, but it's as flexible as a slice of shokupan.
So this is it:
400g EF FiberFlour
50g gluten powder
360g warmed milk
15g butter
7g salt
7g baking powder (I might omit this next time and see what happens)
15g yeast
1 egg
I did the initial kneading in a bread machine (my finger joints aren't what they used to be) and finished it off by hand. No second proofing: just shape and leave to rise for an hour. I also used the bread machine to bake it, but as I don't use the programmed loaf settings and just treat the machine as a dough mixer and mini oven, I don't know how this would work with a rapid or regular white loaf programme. Anyway, the dough rose to the top of the pan, which was indicative of the kind of crumb I was going to get. I think the temperature of the bread machine (Tower Pain et Delices) is about 350F/ 175C, and I baked it for 40 minutes, so if I were using an oven I'd probably stick with that.
As bread machines make ugly loaves, I might bite the bullet, clear out all the baking kit from my big oven, and do a proper job in a Pullman loaf tin.
loaf.mp4
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