The taste was better than previous attempts. I suspect it is due to the use
of wet (aka brick, cake, baker's) yeast.

http://img45.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ui2ik3f892688a5attid0c1gi5.jpg

The crumb is not as nice as it should be since I think I am having trouble
developing gluten. My doughs are never silky when I follow recipes.
Itonically I know the look and feel of silky dough b/c I know how to make
gnochi's from scratch without a recipe - I just look and feel the dough.
It's so easy. Then I go to a bread recipe and ignore all reason and common
sense and then get extremely wet dough (83%% hydration?!?!) even though I
follow the recipe exactly.

-Regards,

Baka Joe
___________________________________
my bread: http://www.joesbread.com/
my faith: http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/jbc33/

There are two reasons for this post:

[1] the height on my mixer being adjusted, the "pigtail" blade is still off
of the bottom by approximately a whopping 0.7 mm!

[2] the second loaf for today, I now knew to compensate. So I mixed the
dough ingredients together by hand and the mix came off of the sides of the
bowl just as I initially expected it to and just as the recipe says it
would. (This is the "Rustic Italian Bread" recipe in Cook' Illustrated,
"Baking Illustrated".) Great, something is working. I let it sit 40 mins.
and then added the sponge and mixed it using the dough hook -by habd-. It
was looking more perfecter than a "more perfecter machine" could make it
look.

I was growing weary of the World Wrestling Dough performance in my bowl so I
just knew *coughmoroncough* I could let the machine do its job for which I
paid the 300 scafadone's. W*R*O*N*G*! (Did I hear a bell? ... wrestling
match must be over and the bowl won!)

I just got back in the kitchen (semester is over) to bake some bread using
wet yeast. I love it, but that isn't why I am posting. I have a KitchenAid 6
Qt. mixer which left the bottom of the dough/sponge combination -UNMIXED!-

I was always concerned about the bottom of the bowl not getting any mix time
and it turns out that my concern is right on. So today, when I saw that, I
figured I did something worng - well, yes, and no.

A google search turned up a page about mixing (which had little to do about
using a stand mixer) but had the very thing I did need - a video of making
bread. And what did I see? ... The artisan home baker mixed the initial
ingrediants by hand and then put it in the mixer. Great! I thought I know
what _I_ did wrong. But then I realized, no, the bottom of the bowl is
_still_ not getting any mix time. So that's when I knew to come here and ask
for some help.

How do you all deal with this annoying problem regarding mixing? NOTE: not
using a stand mixer means you are kneading the dough by hand - the entire
process is (literally) hands on. I envy you - but I am (still) not in that
kind of shape. Is there a way to get the bottom (~1/4 cup) of the
ingredients to blend in?

Thanks in advance, and it feels good to be baking again! :)

Has anyone used a Pain-de Mie bread pan? Is it worth getting one?,

alkem@webtv.net