Bella pro series. Sounds expensive but it was around $80 from Best Buy online. It is my new best friend

We find buying our bread at the bakers saves enough mess and time, to play another round of golf.

We find, that buying our bread at the bakers saves enough mess and time, to play another round of golf.

I like to stretch the dough a couple of times, as in making a baguette, and let it rise in between.

I have taken up baking the last couple of years, sort of as a hobby, (examples below). I seem to do O.K. on basic white bread. Where I have problems is with heavier type breads like rye or pumpernickel, they seem really heavy and dense. Being a guy I do not have a lot of experience with this, so, any suggestions are appreciated.

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Let the second rise take 3 or so hours. We make whole wheat bread and find we get better results when doing this.

bread
 

The key for bread rising is the amount of gluten in the flour. Flour verities vary dramatically in the amount of gluten. Some flour will have <10% gluten and some more than 15% gluten. If you have flour with low gluten, it will not rise as well as one with higher gluten. Modern wheat has been engineered to have higher gluten content. Heritage wheat, i.e., wheat that has not been selectively breed or genetically modified to higher gluten content, has a lower gluten percentage and the gluten is different than the gluten in modern wheat. Another factor in bread rising is the amount of time since the wheat berries were ground into flour. If you grind wheat berries yourself, you'll find that the bread will rise significantly more.

Apologies to Earnest Hemingway
 

To all responders to this thread. Is there a Sourdough Bread Club in the Villages? If so, I'd like to know and would certainly be interested in joining. I've been dabbling/making sourdough bread this past year. Yes, second dough rise has presented problems.

^^^This right here!!^^^
I bake bread and even wrote a few magazine articles about it a few years back. The quality of your dough and bread will vary with the surrounding conditions, so you may have to tweak the recipe. Another factor to consider when baking bread is whether or not you are using a bread machine. ( I also like to increase the amount of fat in the recipe!)

Far from a baker. I did make rye bread. Mixing the dough was beyond the power of available tools. I resorted to, DON'T TELL ANYONE, using my drill press at low speed.

Being a guy? Most bakers are guys. Surely none of the ladies would use a drill press to mix dough-it does work and is like that show tool time.

No, I use a bowl and a wooden spoon, until it's too thick for the spoon; then I use my hands.

Our heavy duty mixer should stand up to it as we have put more than 8 cups flower into it a bread recipe

I second every one of your tips...have found all those you mentioned to be very important after having the same types of "problems", poor rise, very poor 2nd rise, effect of high humidity, all tips you mentioned are accurate for sure.