Yeast Help.....doubled in size??

[erinyyc]

I am completely useless at yeast baking. How can you tell EXACTLY what doubled in size looks like??

Any help would be great!! I would love to make bread etc., but I have NO luck. I could also use help with kneading.

TIA

Erin :confused:

[lisas3575]

I maybe wrong about this, but I think I read if you push two fingers an inch or so into the dough and it doesn't spring back, it's risen enough. I generally just go by the time guideline. :rolleyes:

I don't even know why I'm answering your question as I have the *worst* luck with bread. Don't listen to me! :p

[erinyyc]

*bump*

[Leslie w]

I find it rather difficult to tell. When I make pizza dough (on Fridays) I usually just go by how long the recipe estimates rising times, between 45 min to an hour. I've found that if I let the dough go longer than that it will collapse and not rise again, giving my pizza a flat bread texture, which is sometimes pretty good, but you wouldn't want it to happen if you were making a loaf.

I have to tell you that I put my dough in the oven which has a dough rising cycle, it heats the inside of the oven to 100 degrees. I've never raised it on a counter. That might take longer.

[lisas3575]

I did some checking and some nice soul posted this site to help me out. maybe it will give you some insight. www.kingarthurflour.com also has a nice tips/techniques section, but it looks like their site is down at the moment.

http://www.breaking-bread.com/dough.htm

[Gracie]

You just need to see that the dough is quite a bit larger than when you started and yes, that if you stick your finger in the dough, the indentation stays there.

When you put your dough into your loaf pan, notice how much of the pan it fills. Generally the pan will be half full and the dough will reach halfway up the sides of the pan.

45 min later the dough should be as tall as the pan sides (or close - bread is not an exact science) and you can say it has "doubled", i.e halfway up the pan sides and now all the way up the pan sides. It may be crowning up over the top of the pan a bit.

I'm sorry I'm not good at describing it, but I hope this helped a little.

Loren

[Gilgamesh37]

If you really feel strongly about making sure your dough is doubled, once the King Arthur site comes back up, they sell a rising bucket with volume gradations marked on the side--so you can dump in your dough and actually see when it's doubled.

I usually just eyeball it, and use the recipe estimates as a starting point--my house is generally very chilly, esp in fall/winter, so I end up doing a lot of adjusting, turning my oven into a bread box, etc. Homemade bread and rolls are truly a joyous thing