Cookaholics Bulletin Board

So, I had a successful experiment with increasing yeast and heat to "rush" some bread:

http://fuzzychef.org/challah-on-the-table-in-2-hours/

Has anyone else done this? What are the limits to how much you can cut rising time without tasting like brewery leavings?

In one of my earliest bread books (The Complete Book Of Breads, 1973) he had several methods for making faster yeast breads - Instant Blend, Can-do-quick, and Easy Mixer came to mind, but I had to look, to see if there were more! There was one more, called 30 minute white bread, only because it was risen just 30 min., before baking. They all skip the first rise - some with a brief rest, before forming the loaf, rising, and baking. Instant lend uses approx 1 tsp yeast/c of flour, and the rapidmix method of mixing yeast and 2 c flour, and adding the water at 120-130°, and beating for a few min, to dissolve and speed up the yeast, before adding more flour and kneading. I had notes by a couple,
something like "OK, but not as good as longer risen breads", so I figured that out early on. The total time given was right around 2 hrs., or just above, for all of them.

Dave,

I was a bit surprised that there was no appeciable harm to the flavor of the challah. I think that fast-rise may be the way to go, in general, for breads which don't need much fermentation flavor, like challah, pull-apart bread, and dinner rolls.

Hmm, that is interesting, I like to make bread especially in the winter and fast tracking some of them would make it more practical.

Paul,

Of course, the other way is to get a bread maker.

Been there, done that, wasn't impressed with the flavour. I prefer my sandwich bread to have some chew, some crust and a more complex flavour. It is easy enough to replicate a bread maker recipe without a bread maker. The challah type stuff is more interesting, as you say it is more tolerant.

IMO the bread machine is underestimated. I prefer mine (Zojirushi) to the KA mixer for that purpose. It takes all the fuss and mess out of bread-making for me.
A lot less clean up. I do, however, only use the 'dough' setting. Then I remove the dough, shape, let rise again and bake in my conventional oven...I like having more control over the doneness and browning.

Linda, I did that for a while too, but found -- for me -- a mixer was just as easy and the same, mess-wise. I expect that really is a your-milage-may-vary.

So, on a related note, I've been utterly frustrated with supermarket pita, they are kinda vile, and that was driving home by a very very good middle eastern place nearby that made their own and it was delicious. So, looked into it, basically pita can easily fall into this fast-bread category, and also can be easily portioned and stored for baking, so I think that will be my short term project.

Paul,

Arabic or Greek pita? For Greek, I used the recipe from Alexiadou's cookbook, and they turned out excellent. Greek pita are started on a skillet, so I used a large electric griddle and was able to do 4 at once.

Not sure where my Arabic pita recipe is, I could search for it.

In this case, Arabic, but we like the greek ones two. Serious eats has a nice article on pita (arabic IMO)