[Ellendra]

I had a baking question for you. I haven’t been able to get my bread to raise right for ages, even though I used to bake bread all the time. I had assumed it was because I couldn’t do much kneading anymore with my bad shoulder, but last weekend I managed to knead some dough for dinner rolls, and they still never raised. The yeast proofed just fine, and the room was the right temperature. What could I be doing wrong?

I did go online and try to figure it out, and came across hundreds of stories of additives in the flour that made it not raise right. Could that be what’s going on here? And if so, how do I find flour without additives without actually milling it myself?

[JRandomFreeper]

I don't know if you can get King Arthur flour or Pioneer Mills flour where you are. If you can get either of those, they work great for bread.

Make sure you are using bread flour or all purpose flour, and not self-rising flour.

/johnny

[sockmonkey]

The yeast proofed just fine, and the room was the right temperature. What could I be doing wrong?

Where are you letting your bread rise? I sometimes find ramping up the humidity helps. Also, are you using the amount of sugar called for in the recipe?

[sockmonkey]

Now that I've insulted my dead Grandmother, I will add that maybe old German women just liked heavy dense bread. I always thought it was so awful because her sandwich bread recipe had milk in it.

Also, maybe she actually thought those refrigerator no bake oatmeal cookies really were my favorite..or maybe she was trying to poison me with them.

[Califreak]

I never could make a decent loaf of bread until I bought a KitchenAid stand mixer and used the bread recipe from their manual.

And the only bread I make that turns out decent is the plain old white.

Until I got that mixer I could only bake dense bricks.

So sad. : )