The quest for good bread

I had bought a state of the art bread machine because I really like fresh bread, and I am a bit picky in how I want it. And all was well for about a year. Until it wasn't.

For some reason, my bread came out very flat. I hadn't changed anything about the settings! Nor was I using unusual ingredients. But, of course, ingredients can change over time. I suspected it had something to do with the bread improver I was using. That was past its "best before" date. Would that be the culprit? 

The next loaf I made was without the bread improver. Still not the sort of loaf I am supposed to get! So I needed to look for another explanation. My next hypothesis was the white flour. I had noticed it was a bit lumpy. It is not supposed to be lumpy! It wasn’t old. But my experiment is very slow. It takes me three days to eat a loaf, so I can not experiment very fast. But I made up my mind to buy a bag of strong white flour in a different shop, and see if that would solve it. That had to wait until after my Finland adventure, though.

In the meantime I had bread I did not enjoy. That is not good. I normally absolutely love it when it is fresh bread day. But now, what the machine produced is not even as good as factory bread. Unsatisfactory!

The day of my return I bought white flour, and the day after I had good bread again. This makes me think it was at least largely the white flour! I cannot exclude that changing the whole wheat flour would improve things even further, but for now at least I am satisfied with my bread. I am relieved! Bread is important to me. And now I have some 2 kg of white flour I need to find a different destination for. I foresee quiche on the menu…

Bread-shaped bread again, quite unlike the flat stuff I had to suffer for a while and which I forgot to take a picture of