bFeedme

Cooking, Recipe and Food Blog

  • Home
  • About
  • Archives
  • Contact Us
  • Store

Tips for Painless Breadmaking

May 3, 2010 By Lorraine

Bread

In my last post, I sang the praises of my favorite Crocs shoes for baking, which never fail to ensure that my legs and feet are taken care of during particularly grueling baking marathons. What I didn’t pay enough attention to, apparently, was what all the kneading was doing to my back and shoulders.

Until last night. I awoke at 3:30 a.m. in agony. My left shoulder burning, I could barely move my arm. Pain, pain, pain. I remember thinking, groggily, that “pain” meant “bread” in French- and how appropriate it was. Yes, I ordinarily think this way.

It was my fault, of course. I hadn’t done upper-arm exercises in weeks months, so what was I thinking jumping right into half an hour of kneading extremely heavy dough?

I’m much better today, thanks to visualization techniques (and a good dose of painkillers), and I’m chalking it up as another lesson learned.

Tips for Painless Breadmaking

  • Be smart about kneading. If I had more upper-body strength (and, I’m sure, less butter-fat), I would have breezed through the hardcore kneading session yesterday. I should have waited until my heavy-duty mixer got back from the shop (tomorrow!) before attempting a breadmaking spree.
  • Make changes carefully. Despite having made that bread recipe nearly a hundred times perfectly, I decided yesterday to replace more than half of the usual all-purpose flour with some nice, gluten-rich bread flour. It made the dough extra heavy, and a little too dense.
  • Timing is everything. Because I wanted to serve at least one of the loaves of bread for lunch, I didn’t let the dough rise enough on its first rise (it’s a double-rise recipe). This, too, probably contributed to its heaviness.
  • Get help. When I was nearly done kneading the dough, my husband walked into the kitchen and asked if I needed any help kneading. He took over for the last few minutes, but I should have had him take over much earlier. He does, after all, have all those “guy muscles”.

Do you bake bread regularly? What are your tips for easy homemade breadmaking?

Filed Under: Baking Tagged With: bread baking, breadmaking tips, homemade bread

Categories