Yeah no worries, I really like helping new bakers out, so it's no sweat. My biggest piece of advice I can give is to be patient! With the bread and also with yourself. If you don't think your bread is ready for the next step, let it go longer, and if you make a mistake, don't beat yourself up. Remember, it's only bread, and making a great loaf takes practice. I recommend picking up some literature. My favorite reference book is "Bread" by Jeffrey Hamelman, here's a link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1118132718/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1466286149&sr=8-1&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=bread+jeffrey+hamelman

Also "Flour Water Yeast Salt" has a good step by step guide to basic sourdough and its simple variations. I forget the author of that one ATM.

As for practice, there's nothing you can really do besides make bread. Make sure you are equipped with the necessary tools though. You'll need a bowl scraper, a bench knife, kouche, a scale, and if you're not using a big industrial deck oven you'll need a cast iron or ceramic dutch oven (this is for steam. There's a lot of different methods for home bakers to steam their bread, but this I find works the best.) Probably the most important thing you can do in the mean time is read about "bakers percentage". It is a way of looking at a bread formula that turns anything into a ratio. It's super easy, and will help you really understand ratios of ingredients in the long run.


So, here's the scoop on Starter. Starter, or "preferment", is a general term for a culture of yeast feeding on carbohydrates found in flour. There are many types of starter that achieve different desired effects in the final product of the bread. The most versatile and popular starter is called "Levain". Levain will add sourness to your bread, increase shelf life, intensify flavor, strengthen gluten to make a chewy crumb (the soft spongy inside of bread with all the holes) and increase health benefits through longer fermentation. The method for making Levain is a multiple day process, and it could take 1 to 2 weeks to fully mature depending on the heat of your kitchen (the hotter, the faster) but as a rule of thumb, don't use your levain until at least 2 weeks just to be on the safe side. If Levain is too young the bread will not properly rise. Here is the equipment you'll need

A Mason jar

A cloth and a rubber band for the top

The method is simple. Yeast is already present all around you. In the air, on your hands, in flour, on the inside the Mason jar, everywhere! What you are trying to do is culture that yeast so it can reproduce fast enough to leven bread. The formula is as follows

100g water

100g white bread flour

Dash of honey

Sprinkle of raisins or any other dried fruit

The honey helps the yeast feed faster, and dried fruit has a TON of yeast on the skin, so adding these few ingredients will give your levain a kick start. If at any point your starter seems slow, you can add honey and raisins to the next batch to give it that jump start. So you mix these ingredients all together inside the Mason jar. Then cover the top with the cloth and rubber band, and put it in a warm place overnight. You do not want your starter to be cold, or the yeast will take forever to get mature.

So the next day you are going to "perpetuate" your starter. That means that your going to take a bit of the old starter and give it some fresh water and flour to feast on. You're going to want to do this in 24 hour intervals every day. Here's the formula you should follow for the first week:

100g water

50g white bread flour

50g whole wheat flour

15g yesterday's starter

Mix the 15g of starter with the 100g of water, then add the flour, it will make things easier. Once you make the new starter, you can throw the rest of yesterday's batch in the garbage, there really is no more use for it. You should taste your starter every day, you'll be amazed at how sour it gets. Also, if your starter isn't bubbling in at most 4 or 5 days, there is something wrong and you should start over. After the first week, you should change your formula to this:

80g water

70g white bread flour

20g whole wheat flour

10g rye flour

10g starter

Less water will stiffen the starter and make it move slower. The added white flour gives the yeast more starches to convert to carbs for food, and the rye will give the starter a pleasant acidic note, it will definitely come through in your bread. For a less sour starter, omit the rye flour and replace it with white bread flour. After a week, your starter should be mature! How you can tell if it has reached maturity is by taking a small pinch and putting it in a glass of warm water. If it stays together and floats to the top, you've got yourself mature starter! Simple as that. Now you can make delicious, nutritious, crusty French bread any time you want. I also find keeping a levain starter on deck makes me want to bake bread more often at home.

Something to keep in mind, if you forget to feed your starter, it is not the end of the world. Old starter can still be used to make new starter. After a few days of neglect, the starter will start to develop a small layer of grey alcohol on the top, and that's totally fine! The starter isn't "going bad" or anything, it's just run out of food, and the yeast cells have gone dormant. Remember, yeast is the most abundant microorganism on Earth, it has been around for millenia, it can survive a very long time without food. I've taken 3 week old starter, fed it for 2 days, and it was good as new, so whatever you do, DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR OLD STATER AND START OVER.

If feeding daily becomes expensive, I suggest using this formula

60g water

95g white bread flour or AP flour

5g rye flour

15g yesterday's starter

Let it sit out for about 3 - 5 hours, than keep this variation in the fridge, and feed it weekly. This is also good if you are going on vacation and don't have a way of feeding your levain every day. Just remember a few days in advance to switch it back to the other formula before you use it.

And it's as simple as that! Good luck on your home baking adventure. I find it to be immensely rewarding, and what's better than having fresh baked nutritious bread to feed friends and family? If you have any more questions, or you run into a problem, I'll be happy to help any way I can. There's a TON of information to absorb, and I know it can be a little overwhelming, so feel free to ask.

Happy baking!

Hi. I'm Pikul, but this expansion I've been playing Clovenshield because fuck DPS queues. That may change in the near future. (Sorry RoD members who saw the rest of this post in the subreddit).

I run the Raid of Disapproval, coming back after an 8 month hiiatus. We killed Jin'rokh last week, died to Horridon trash, and got trolled by horridon. I'm cautiously optimistic for this week! I'm also a moderator.

This is me and my wife. We have been married for almost 6 years. Although that's not a good picture of me any more since I had LASIK about 2 years ago. This is a better one. I hate most pictures of me since they accentuate both of my chins as seen here

We have a house in Falls Church, VA. If anyone is ever in Washington DC, send me a message and we can grab a beer.

I work here in the Office of Fossil Energy. Not a surprise if you google my name. My office is halfway between the Washington Monument and the Capitol building. I can tell you all about coal plants and EPA Regulations, but don't ask me since I start to ramble on. The only work things worth mentioning are I'm a Six Sigma Black Belt, last year I wrote a paper and presented it at PowerGen International in Cologne Germany, and in 2011, I was on detail over to the Executive Office of the President so I got to say "I work at the White House." Looks good on a resume as well.

My wife works here as a horticulturalist. She maintains the Bishop's garden and it is beautiful.

Graduated from Penn State about 6 years ago as a Mechanical Engineer, and now I'm a grad student at Johns Hopkins , working on a Systems Engineering degree. While at PSU, I went to about 2 football games and have hardly been back since graduating.

Grew up here It's a shitty little town that's claim to fame was the highest grossing wal-mart for 2006. Although, they are on top of a large shale gas formation, which has brought tons of economic development to the area. My wife grew up near there too

These are my pets Tavi the Corgi, Gabriel AKA Pinky the Oriental Short Hair, and Sampson the Bengal). The cats are 11 years old, the puppy is 9 weeks old. He is very demanding and a large part of why I stopped playing for 8 months. Pinky does not like the puppy.

Here I am underwater. The Mrs. and I got our advanced scuba certification last summer - deepest I've been is 100 feet. We are totally spoiled by caribbean diving, which is really warm and crystal clear. The Atlantic is cold and murky. I recommend the ABCs for diving - Antigua, Bonaire, and Cozumel. Cosumel especially - we had a wonderful drift dive and saw a massive Eagle Ray. I want to get better at underwater photography.

I'm an internet ordained minster. I officiated the wedding of two of my best friends. Afterwards, we met up with some other friends and went rafting in Colorado on some Class V rapids. That was fun.

This is some beer that I made. I got really into home brewing over the past year and love to share my craft with other people so I get less fat. I also have a blog but it's not very interesting. Mostly some recipes, one photo journal, and a few sundry items. Most recently, I bought some kegs and got all the gear and shit to put it in my minifridge (or "lagering cabinet). That was fun, but I don't have enough people over to drink it. I have been told on two occasions that "this is the best beer I ever had". I entered a brewing competition last year, and got a 28/50 on my Strawberry Wheat beer. I've gotten better, I might try again later.

I have a guitar that I've been meaning to start playing. I will set a new years resolution for both "play my guitar" and "go to the gym", but I fully intend to break both of those. Homebrewing counteracts any gym activities anyways.

I own a bright green Mazda 2 so I never lose it in a parking lot...unless I park next to an SUV. Then I can't even see it because it is a super tiny car.

In the kitchen, I bake bread from scratch and got pretty good at it (simple techniques make amazing bread), roast my own coffee with a popcorn maker, and really love baking desserts. I'm not too great at decorating or presentation, but boy do I love carbs and sweets.


Faust is a real life friend of mine. If he doesn't post pictures, I can put one of his 6 facebook photos up.

Last, here's a bonus video of when we painted our Horde banner. I thought it was cool since we had to paint it from underneath. It prevents large drips/drops of dye and looked really cool from above.

I think that's about it. If someone knows how I should motivate myself to go to the gym let me know.

Ok your turn.

(And Vote for Pikul)

Hi! I also recently started baking as a new hobby. I’m very much still a novice and still find it quite intimidating, but I’ve found quite a few decent vids and books that have helped me to get started...

Bake with Jack - really excellent channel filled with 4 min videos talking about terminology, equipment and technique:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTVR5DSxWPpAVI8TzaaXRqQ

Richard Bertinet’s Waitrose video. A bit basic but I find Bertinet’s mannerisms inspiring and the instructions are very useful. Different kneading technique too:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTVR5DSxWPpAVI8TzaaXRqQ

BBC Good Food basic bread recipe. There is probably a better basic recipe, such as the King Arthur one, but this is the first one I used. I halved the salt on this and it’s given me really nice bread every time:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread

Brilliant Bread by James Morton. Only just digging into this book but it really is great. Lots of recipes and kneading advice etc. I’d recommend it to anyone:

https://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Bread-James-Morton/dp/0091955602

Flour Water Salt Yeast. I’ve not really delved into this much yet as I’m still getting used to the basics, but everyone on here seems to love it and it seems very well written (note:you’ll need a Dutch oven for this):

https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

If you’re going no-knead/Dutch oven, I’d say it’s worth giving this a watch too, but I’d check the comments as well as a lot of people seem to be tweaking the recipe. A seemingly infamous video/recipe from NY Times:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

Dough by Richard Bertinet. Another ace book filled with simple easy to follow recipes. Also comes with a short DVD, although I don’t know what’s on it as I’m yet to watch:

https://www.amazon.com/Dough-Simple-Contemporary-Richard-Bertinet/dp/1909487538

River Cottage basic white bread. Not the best instructions but I still found it a useful watch when very first starting out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTVWuw_SBSo

Not sure if these are 100% the best places to start but they’ve definitely helped me. I tend to google pretty much everything, which will lead you to a lot of useful sites too.

I hope these help, even if only a little. Im sure others will make some good suggestions here.

Happy baking!

Pizza is extremely easy to cook at home dude. I've just been buying random cook books over the last year or so. General use ones, a few Italian speciality ones and BBQ ones, because that's what I love :D

> So they don't add any other toppings? Like pepperoni or anything? Isn't the crust done similar to Nyc style pizza?

Not in a Margherita in Italy, no. They're very traditional when it comes to your pizza in Italy. You can get things like Salami or Pepperoni, but they're not like the ones we get here. I've been to Rome three times and I've only found pizzas that have very thin crusts and are pretty crispy with a bit of chew. I have to say, the taste is amazing. It's not just the ingredients though, it's the oven. They use traditional ,wood fired ovens that can burn up to about 500 degrees centigrade. I'm thinking about building one out in my garden :D With pizza, you cook it as hot as you can. A traditional wood fired pizza oven will cook a pizza in about 90 seconds, at most.

> It just seems like they would have some special sauce or does the basil really help it stand out?

There's a specific type of tomatoes that everyone seems to use called San Marzano tomatoes, but you don't have to be that picky. You can use whatever you like. I rarely use anything other than BBQ sauce because I love the taste of it. When I make pizzas at home, some of my family like regular bolognese sauce from a jar and some even like ketchup mixed with a bit of bolognese sauce.

> I'd love to start cooking from scratch but I'm still learning so much in regards to just Regular cooking that I feel like I'd be biting off more than I could chew.

Don't be intimidated by it. Treat it as fun, not a chore. Break your expectations down into smaller chunks. What's your favourite type of cooking? What's a recipe you want to learn how to do first? Baking bread and pizza are a good start, because you can literally just make the pizza dough recipe I posted and cook it as a loaf instead of stretching it out to be a pizza dough.

If you have a bit of money, I found these books great:

• Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day is a great book for everything from a simple sandwich loaf to a complicated braided sweetbread. I love this book.
  
  
• Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Home Cooking and Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Home Cookery Course. These two are full of great recipes to have on-hand and will teach you loads :D
  
  Canning stuff would be more about pickling and brining. I've never done it, but I did go so far as to buy fresh jalapenos and some jars because I wanted to. Next port of call haha.
  
  Let me know if you've any other questions. Feel free to message me too if you ever need a hand with anything :D

Basically gonna echo most of the answers already posted, but just to pile on:

• 8" chef's knife. 10" is longer than may be comfortable and 12" is longer than necessary, but 7" may start to feel a little short if she's ever slicing large melon or squash. I'm a casual knife nerd and I have knives by Wusthof, Victorinox, Shun and Mac. My favorite.
  
  
• This Dutch oven. Enameled and cast iron just like the Le Creuset that a few other comments have mentioned, but much, much cheaper. I own two and they're both great. I also have the non-enameled version for baking bread, but I don't recommend it for general use unless you're a Boy Scout. Here's an entertaingly-written blog post comparing the Lodge vs. Le Creuset in a short rib cookoff.
  
  
• This cutting board and this cutting board conditioner. The importance of an easy and pleasant to use prep surface can't be overstated. I'm listing this third on purpose; this is one of the most important things your kitchen can have. A recipe that calls for a lot of chopping is no fun when you're fighting for counter space to do the chopping, or doing it on a shitty plastic board.
  
  
• A cheap scale and a cheap thermometer. Seriously, these are as important as the cutting board.
  
  
• Just gonna crib this one right off /u/Pobe420 and say cheapo 8–10" (I recommend 10–12" but that's my preference) nonstick skillet. One note I'd add is that pans with oven-safe handles are a bit more dual-purpose than pans with plastic or rubberized handles. You can't finish a pork chop in the oven in a skillet with a rubberized handle. But one could say you shouldn't be cooking a pork chop on a nonstick pan to begin with. The important thing is to keep this one cheap: you're going to be replacing it every couple of years, there's no getting around that. For my money $30 or less, and $30 is pretty expensive for these things.
  
  
  

• Cookbooks
  

  Nothing inspires cooking like a good cookbook collection. The great news about cookbooks is that they're often bought as gifts or souvenirs and they make their way onto the used market cheap and in great condition. Here are my suggestions for a great starter shelf:
  
  

1. The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt. I kind of hate that this is my number one recommendation, but I don't know your wife and I do know J. Kenji López-Alt. This one is brand new so you're unlikely to find it used and cheap, but as a catch-all recommendation it has to take first place. Moving on to the cheap stuff:
   
   
2. Regional French Cooking by Paul Bocuse. This is possibly the friendliest authoritative book on French food out there, and a hell of a lot easier to just dive into than Julia Child (Julia is the expert, and her book is an encyclopedia). Bocuse is the undisputed king of nouvelle cuisine and people like Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain (so maybe a generation ahead of you and I) came from him. Paul Bocuse is French food as we know it, and yet this book—an approachable, coffee-table sized thing—still has a recipe for fucking mac and cheese. It's outstanding.
   
   
3. Theory & Practice / The New James Beard by James Beard. These will completely cover your entire library of American cooking. Nothing else needed until you get region-specific. When you do, go for something like this.
   
   
4. Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. When she died, the NYT ran a second obituary that was just her recipe for bolognese.
   
   
5. Christ, top five. Who gets 5th? I'm going with From Curries To Kebabs by Madhur Jaffrey. Don't get bamboozled into buying "Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible" which is the same book, repackaged and priced higher. You want the one with the hot pink dust jacket, it's unmistakeable. This is one of those end-all books that you could cook out of for the rest of your life. It covers almost every diet and almost every country that Beard and Bocuse don't.
   
   
6. Honorable mentions: Here come the downvotes. Pok Pok by Andy Ricker. If you're American and you want to cook Thai, this is the one. Ten Speed Press can go home now. The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Rosen (so close to making the list). I shouldn't need to say much about this; it's the book of diasporic Jewish food, which means it covers a lot of time and almost every possible country. It's a no-brainer. Thai Food by David Thompson (a perfect oral history of Thai food for English speakers, only it doesn't include Pok Pok's precise measurements, which in practice I've found important). Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. Not for someone who just wants to become a baker, this book is for someone who wants to make Ken Forkish's bread. And for a casual bread baker I can't imagine a better introduction. Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham. Andrea Nguyen is out there and Andrea Nguyen is awesome, but I really like Mai Pham's book. It's accessible, reliable and regional. You don't get the dissertation-level breakdown on the origins of chicken pho that you get from Andrea, but the recipe's there, among many others, and it's fucking outstanding. Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. This vegan cookbook is dope as hell and will really expand your imagination when it comes to vegetables. This could actually have been number five.

Ok I'm going to start with yeast which from here seems to be the culprit.
First off types of yeast:
Fresh
Also called called cake yeast this is non dried non grain yeast, I've never seen it in stores and only seen it in a few recipes. Most of the time the only people who use this are professional bakeries. Pretty much only here for posterity's sake. If you find a recipe generally you can substitute one of the two bellow adjusting your liquids as needed.
Active Dry
This is pretty standard stuff it has been dried and has fairly large grains. It is best stored in the refrigerator or freezer to keep it fresh, remember yeast is a living organism. Must be proofed before using (more on this later).
Instant
Also available in stores the grains are much smaller than active dry and do not need to be proofed. The smaller grains and possibly the way it is produced mean that it has a greater effect than active dry yeast. You can substitute one for the other. To use instant in the place of active dry reduce the amount by 25% so 1 teaspoon of active dry becomes 3/4 teaspoon instant. You can work the other way too just be sure to use 25% more of active dry when replacing instant.


Now lets look at the physiology of yeast and see what makes it tick. Yeast is a living organism we carefully add it to recipe allow it to grow and multiply to give us the effects we desire. Then we kill it. Cheerful thought.
So first we allow the yeast to grow. Yeast needs a few things to prosper: food, warmth, and a suitable environment. Yeast like everything else needs food to survive, we use sugars and the flour itself. Yeast uses any sugar (honey, cane sugar, malt) you add to a recipe to grow and in return it creates carbon dioxide, the air bubbles in bread which makes dough rise and makes the difference between cooked flour and bread. Yeast also breaks down some of the proteins in flour and converts them to simple sugars. Secondly yeast needs warmth to grow if you keep it in the fridge or freezer you slow the growth and you can prolong the life of the yeast. On the flip side when you want to encourage growth you need to make sure that there is enough heat to be active. So when you want your dough to rise leave it somewhere warm but not hot. Most places recommend something around 70 to 80 degrees if you can manage it. A laundry room is a good option. Just make sure it does not exceed 120 degrees because that is about when yeast will start to die.
This leads us to the second half, killing yeast. Killing yeast can be pretty easy and I suspect it happened inadvertently in a few of your loaves. First as mentioned above if it is too hot your yeast will die, this includes any water you add as a good rule of thumb your body temperature is ~96 degrees so if water feels neutral to you that's about how hot it is. Try to get a digital instant read thermometer. They are pretty cheap and very handy, you can also use it to check the internal temperature of bread to see if it is done. Secondly is the environment, direct contact with salt kills yeast. Most recipes will tell you to add the salt and yeast separately allowing each to mix into the flour so direct contact is not made.


Now to sum this all up into one topic technique, proofing. Proofing is what you do when you take the yeast (generally active dry) and add it yo the water you are going to be using in the recipe and allow it to sit for 10 minutes or so The water allows the yeast to wake up and start being active, you will see bubbles form on the surface, thus prooving that your yeast is alive. Some recipes tell you to add a pinch of sugar to the water, this gives they yeast something to process. Just make sure you don't add all the sugar the recipe calls for. This can cause a period of high activity and then a sudden crash when the yeast over exerts itself. The end result is a longer rise time. Instant yeast doesn't need to be proofed since the smaller grains dissolve instantly on contact with the dough but I do it anyway sometimes just to help get things started.


This is about all I have for yeast, a few other points I have. Salt is very important, it greatly affects the taste of the loaf and helps control the growth of the yeast. Check to see if your recipe was calling for kosher salt or table salt. Table salts grains are much finer and result in a much more concentrated amount per spoonful than kosher. Salt also has the annoying habit of attracting water molecules from the air causing it to swell, this changes the actual amount of salt you get in a spoonful. Try and go by weight if you can. A scale is an enormously useful tool for baking. Flour has a tendency to get packed down when scooped certain ways affecting the total amount you are actually adding to the recipe. Scoop and sweep is a good middle of the road approach that a lot of people use. My last point is that of freshness, see how old your yeast is you may need some new stuff, how long it lasts has a lot to do with how often it gets warm and where its kept. Yeast can last around a year in a freezer.


Finally for an excellent intro to baking try The Bread Bible you have to have a certain amount of conviction to name a book the anything bible but Rose Levy Beranbaum leaves no doubt that her book deserves the title. She carefully explains what you are doing and why in extremely detailed and percise instructions leaving little room for error.

Well that was quite the wall of text :p don't give up on baking yet. Send me a PM if you have any more questions or just want to chat. Good luck!

The secret to the stretchy dough is actually two separate things, and as a home baker you can really only (reasonably) address one:

1. Pizzerias use a different type of flour than is available to home bakers. If you have been getting into bread baking you probably have a good understanding of how AP flour needs a lot more water than bread flour to reach its full hydration point, and even then has that "grittier" texture (which is part of why bread flour yields better texture when used in breads than AP). Pizzerias use grade 00 flour, which, on the spectrum of flours goes AP -> Bread -> Grade 00 in terms of the amount of water it needs to reach full hydration, and the difference between AP and Bread flour is comparable to the difference between Bread and Grade 00 flour. As a home baker, unless you want to shell out hefty money or have connections in a Pizzeria or food purveyor company, you have to make do with substituting bread flour for the 00 stuff.
   
   
2. Pizzerias almost always use cold fermentation, a process that is pretty much exactly as it sounds: you mix the dough one day prior to use, stretch it into a boule and set it overnight in an airtight container in a refrigerator. The overnight process creates a smaller degree of leavening because of the reduced temperature, but allows for the flour to fully hydrate as well as break down the gluten strands that make dough tough. Dough that has undergone this process is incredibly elastic, smooth, and tends to have great flavor
   
   **So to sum up a nice, happy tl;dr:
   
3. Pizzerias use a different kind of flour you will have a hard time obtaining.
   
4. Pizzerias use cold fermentation to help get the dough stretchy.**
   
   Both of these factors contribute to the discrepancy you are seeing between your dough, and serious pizza dough. I have had some great success at approximating the good stuff when using bread flour, it simply requires a higher level of hydration for the flour. If you like, I can provide the recipe.
   
   Alternatively, you can (and should if you want to get a better sense of bread-baking) buy pretty much the best bread-baking book I have found for a home-baker, which is where I adapted my pizza recipe from. You will notice a lot of similarities between different recipes: focaccia is very similar to pizza dough, which is very similar to ciabatta, which all end up working out very differently depending on how you handle them. Although it may be that your bread recipe is very similar to pizza dough, the difference is in the fermentation and handling process.
   
   Let me know if you have any further questions, I'm pretty new to this subreddit.

Well we go through at least a loaf per week, and I most often make 2 loaves at once (a lot of recipes are designed this way). After they have cooled, we slice them up (this takes a lot of practice too!) and wrap them in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer, so no stale bread. by wrapping them very well, you stave off a lot of the harm of the freezer. Good for at least a week.

In most instances, not a lot of active time is required. If you check out some of Peter Reinhart's methods, really nice bread can be a challenging but time flexible pursuit. Also, look out for many "no knead" recipes that offer some time flexibility, and are very easy to achieve great results.

Also, if you are looking for more conventional sandwich stuff, check out the Joy of Cooking. This was the book I first had success with. Sandwich breads are much easier to achieve good results with than "artisan" stuff, which is a little more picky about technique, but something to build up to! The Joy may be kind of "vanilla" but the recipes are reliable, so they are great to practice with.

I do not really ever have an excess bread, in part because we freeze it so any excess is stored. Also I only have time to produce a batch per week or so. I often also augment it by making pitas/flat breads (These are easy and so cheap compared to the store!), bagels, and pizza dough (also frozen).

The whole idea was to get off store-bought bread completely, and for nearly a year, we've been successful (with the very rare exception of buying fancy stuff from a bakery).

I have never sold bread, but I have given it to people as a gift, or brought it as part of a potluck contribution (talk about frugal and cool!).

I love baking :) I mostly do artisan breads and cookies, and homemade pizza (good pizza starts with good crust!!) but every now and then I'll get on a pie or cupcake kick for a little while.

Ciabatta is probably my favorite bread to make Eat. I also really love homemade pretzels because not only are they delicious, but I can play around with shaping them and make something that is really pretty as well as tasty.

My favorite thing ever is This baking stone It's a lot more expensive than many other stones, but it has been totally worth it. I had 4 others before I finally picked this one up that all ended up cracking in half. This one has lasted me 3 years so far, and I can actually WASH the thing without fear of it exploding next time I use it.

mm... I would also recommend This book to anyone interested in learning to make bread. Its really good and easy to follow, and you can really feel the authors passion for the art.

The last couple of weeks I've been going with this one: Spent grain bread

Also, this book is a pretty good one for low active-time bread making.

This sourdough is awesome, but it's getting more varsity level and greater time commitment.

Making a passable loaf of bread is pretty easy, though. Start off with 3/4 cup or so of warm water, and dissolve one packet of yeast in it. Wait 15 minutes (yeast will have gone all bubbly in this time). Add a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of honey (or molasses, or sugar, or none at all), a splash of oil, and a couple of cups of flour (I use a mixture of whole wheat and bread flour) - I can't tell you how much exactly, because I normally do it by feel. What you want is for it to not be liquidy, but still a little bit sticky (just a little) when you've mixed it all together in the bowl.

Now you sprinkle a bit of flour on the counter and flop that glob of dough on there, and knead it for 10 mintues or so, until it's all homogenous and elastic (some folks use a mixer attachment for this, but I think it's the best part, so I do it by hand). Then pour some oil in the bowl, coat the dough in oil, and cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a tea towel. Let that sucker sit somewhere warmish for about 1 to 1.5 hours, until the dough had doubled in size. Gently press the air out of it and lay it out again on the lightly-floured counter, pressing it into a rectangle a couple of inches thick. Roll it sort of like a swiss cake roll, folding the ends under and making the whole thing more-or-less loaf shaped. Oil a loaf pan, and plop that dough in there, cover again, and let it rise until doubled. It will take less time to rise this time around, more like 30-40 minutes.

In the meantime, heat up the oven to 450F, and add a pan of water at the bottom. The steam gives you a wonderful crust. When the oven is hot and the dough risen, pop it in there. After 10 minutes, turn the heat down to 375F, and let it bake another 40 or so minutes. Minimize the times you spent opening the oven, especially during the beginning. Every time you let heat and steam out you're compromising that poor bread in there. After the loaf is all browned and making your house smell too good to bear, take the steam pan and bread out of the oven. I like to pop the loaf out of the pan and bake it another 5-10 minutes alone to crisp up the crust that was in the pan. Then let it cool and dig in!

It will take a bit of practice, and you might want to start with recipes, but eventually you just run with it and throw in extras (I like flax, sesame and poppy seeds in mine, and the occasional handful of rolled oats, some herbs, etc - it's pretty forgiving). Good luck!

I literally googled it:

So you want to start a pizza shop

Hell, maybe you can start by doing it from your own home.

Or start a mobile pizza shop By the way this link is to an actual magazine devoted to the pizza business (the internet never ceases to amaze me.)

or start out at the farmers market (Holy gazebos! Another link to a site devoted to the pizza business. TIL: a lot of people are in the pizza business).


I assume you already know this as a network engineer, but google is your friend.

Ask it lots and lots of questions. Also depending on the state you are in you might have meet-up groups that you can join (small business/entrepreneur). Also look into your local small business/chamber of commerce organizations. They might have seminars or other resources that you can use (especially on taxes).

This guy sounds like he was in your situation, maybe write directly to people like him and ask them. What sources they would recommend you use to get started. It might be that you write 50 people and 2 respond, but hey, they are experts in the field and might have really good advice. Just make the letter sound personal and not copy and pasted.

As far as inspiring you I would recommend you watch the original kitchen nightmares series that was filmed in the UK (US series is horribly over dramatic) you can still find them on youtube (I think). I really believe Gordon drops some really good nuggets of information on how to run and operate a food business, especially from the chef's perspective.


Get the book "The Elements of Pizza". If you are going to make pizza, make it the best possible.

And finally my only real advice is:

1. Location, Location, Location is the most important aspect to opening a shop.
   
   
2. Keep the menu as simple as possible (it cuts down on costs).
   
   
3. Keep the ingredients simple but of good quality (and if you put sugar in your sauce, may you grow up to be the son of a motherless goat).
   
   That is it my friend. Good luck and have fun storming the castle!
   
   e: Couldn't resist two Princess Bride quotes in one post.
   

I don't know if it's heresy, but have you considered a bread machine? I have a Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme (2 lb), and use it 75% of the time for mixing doughs. I make about 5 loaves/doughs a week in it.

It's super since you can program in your knead times/cycles/types (settings for white/wheat, for example), and mine has an automatic 'punch down' action built around its rising times. On mine I believe I can program up to 3 different rise cycles, each up to 24 hours? The enclosed machine works well for proofing between kneads (don't need to worry about drying out etc.), and I've started to plan meals around the timer function so I can have fresh dough ready for me @ 3pm for dinner that day, setting it up in the mornings alongside coffee & breakfast.

I've read many good things about the longevity of Zo's, and in my experience (several month ownership, making ~5 loaves and/or doughs a week) it's solid and reliable. I even like the loaves baked in it for sandwiches/sweet breads (Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook has LOTS of options).

I know it is missing all of the stand mixer pluses, but for me I'm not a baker of sweets/cakes and already own a pasta machine/assorted grinders and Amazon regularly puts it on sale for $200 free ship/no tax for most, sometimes down to $180 (create a pricewatch with camelcamelcamel for the best deal). There are also other machines with different options (timed yeast introduction, french bread cycles, etc.) but I don't know them, just that they're out there.

Good luck in your search! :)

Totally related! The best advice I have is to start simple. This book by Bonnie Ohara is a really great primer that walks you through bread science and gaining bread confidence. I wish I had it when I started baking!

I also love this book by Ken Forkish. It’s very specifically for those crusty artisan breads that are trendy right now.

Other than that, start out with good recipes. The King Arthur Flour No Knead is a fantastic simple starting point. Whenever you make a new kind of bread, start with a recipe that’s gone through rigorous testing instead of one on some random blog. Good spots to look are Cook’s Illustrated, Bon Appetit, and King Arthur. There’s a bigger chance of success that way. Once you’ve gotten a little more of a feel for what dough should be like for specific breads at certain stages, you can start experimenting and coming up with your own recipes and ratios! There are also a lot of really awesome bakers at r/breadit, r/baking, and r/sourdough who also love to help troubleshoot.

The only other advice I have is to invest in a kitchen scale, a dutch oven, and a bunch of bench scrapers!

Hooray! I love cookbooks!

• Forest Feast is great for those veggies & entertaining
  
  
• A subscription to Cook's Illustrated
  
  
• A solid cookbook - Smitten Kitchen
  
  
• Anything by Yotam Ottolenghi but I particularly LOVE Plenty.
  
  
• The god of pastry Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery
  
  
• David Chang's momofuku, his pastry chef Christina Tosi's milk bar,or a subscription to his magazine Lucky Peach
  
  I don't know if they're into making ice cream, but it's really easy and fun:
  Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream, The Perfect Scoop, and Ample Hills are all great.

Welcome to the hobby!

I like this book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It's got a bunch of great recipes and goes over the history of bread and a number of traditional techniques, with pictures! Other popular books are Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast and The Tartine Bread book.

A dough scraper, a lame (it's pronounced"lahhm", it's French), a banneton, some decent size mixing bowls with lids, kitchen scale, measuring cups and spoons, pizza stone/s, caste iron Dutch oven (for no Knead bread, super easy place to start), an oven I suppose would help if you don't already have one (extra points if it goes to 550*F).

And to save your arms, a good quality mixer. It'll be expensive up front, but I would recommend splurging on a good quality, reputable brand mixer and it'll last you 30 years if you take care of it. The purists will tell you you HAAAAAVE to knead by hand, and it's definitely a skill you should develop, but it's not absolutely necessary and some recipes would be nearly impossible without one. It'll save you a lot of time, effort and headache.

Anyway, all that should definitely get you started. Not all of it is necessary to start, but you seem pretty interested and serious about it, so I want to set you up for success.

First I will point you to The Fresh Loaf, as I once was, if you aren't already familiar with it. There is a lot of information on there, as well as beautiful breads that are posted daily to serve as inspiration.

As for books, what got me started was Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. I knew not a thing about bread making before buying this book, and I can assure you that it is very user friendly. It is very descriptive and easy to follow, and you will yield amazing results by simply following close instruction.

Once I was comfortable enough to expand my repertoire, I picked up Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. He's regarded as one of the best authors for bread making books and for good reason. You can tell the guy knows what he's talking about as he provides you with an easy breakdown of what and why you will be doing something with simple steps. This one covers a broader range of baked goods (baguettes, cinnamon rolls, crumb cake and more) so you can have fun experimenting.

Happy baking!

35 grams of salt :)

In baking one should ALWAYS weigh ingredients, the most important tool in a bakeshop is a scale. Your final product will taste the EXACT same every time if everything is weighed. For home use you just need a little scale, I use this little guy at home.

Most home bakers hate weighing eggs and find it ridiculous so just keep this simple rule in mind. 1 large egg = 50g. So 2 large eggs for every 100g needed.

The reason for weighing literally everything over using cups, teaspoons and other volumetric amounts is definitely well worth reading into as well. Pretty much every book worth its weight will be done in with weights instead of volume and will have a section explaining why. But essentially with baking its chemistry, everything is done to cause a specific reaction and that reaction is done to a certain degree in the end product.


EDIT: If you want some cookbooks I made a post previously about what I recommend for people depending on what they are into making, so I'll post that up in here

Bibles

• Baking Bible
  
• Cake Bible
  
• The Pie and Pastry Bible
  
  Bread
  
  
• Beard on Bread
  
• Bread
  
• Bread Baker's Apprentice
  
• Flour Water Salt Yeast
  
• Josey Baker Bread (I just genuinely like this guy tho lol)
  
• All of the Tartine books (just get all of them, Chad is the man when it comes to bread)
  
  Caramels/Candys/Ice Cream
  
  
• Ample hills creamery
  
• Artisan caramels
  
• Chocolates & Confections
  
• The Sweet Book of Candy Making
  
• Sweet Cream And Sugar Cones
  
  Jack of all trades
  
  
• Baked Occasions
  
• Baker's four seasons
  
• Flour
  
• Flour Too
  
• Model Bakery Cookbook
  
• Momofuku Milk Bar
  
• Ovenly
  
  Pastry/Pies
  
  
• The Art of French Pastry (this is one of my all time favorites)
  
• Creative Eclairs (whole set is great for beginners to intermediates)
  
• First Prize Pies
  
  Textbooks
  
  
• Baking and pastry
  
• On Baking
  
  
  I'm sure I am leaving out a bunch of great ones but if I had to suggest just 1 to anyone it would DEFINITELY be The Art of French Pastry. Best for somebody who has done basics already and looking to try a little more. Even as a professional baker I find myself coming back and just reading the little spots like how he burned himself on his caramel. Great, great book!

The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart is my number one recommendation for bread. Im also a big fan of Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. His first book, Tartine is also great btw. I would skip out on Tartine Book No.3 though which seems to have too many errors for my liking. Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish is also one of the better bread baking books out there.

For general baking, im a big fan of Bouchon Bakery. And one book that will surely help you improve as a baker and I highly recommend you cook through is The Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer. Its like a pastry arts class in a book. I am actually cooking my way through this. If you have a serious sweet tooth, Momofoku Milk Bar by Christina Tosi will probably be what you're looking for. And as someone else recommended, the Baked books are all great.

For cakes, it has to be The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Bernanbaum. This is probably the best cake book of all time. I would supplement this with Toba Garrett's Professional Cake Decorating book.

For pies, my favorites are Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Hoosier Mama. One that I haven't tried but am planning to buy is First Prize Pies. If the book lives up to their reputation, it should be an excellent book.

For plated, more ambitious desserts, I like Payard Desserts. I refer to this when I want to impress company.

It's a little daunting at first but there are lots of very helpful resources out there so you can jump right in! I just started my own starter this week and I've been following this guide: here.

​

But you don't need a sourdough starter to start with bread. If you have a dutch oven then you can start with straight doughs and learn proper folding and shaping while you wait for your starter to grow!

​

There are a few books that are highly recommended by this sub the most popular seems to be Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza (FWSY as you will see it mentioned as here) by Ken Forkish which he shares his own starter recipe and lots of fantastic straight and sourdough breads.

​

If you're not ready to take that big of a dive in yet online there is Jim Laheys No Knead Bread recipe which is a straight dough, super simple, and really quite delicious. I did this one and it was my gateway bread which quickly sent me head first into FWSY and starters.

​

Most importantly, don't be disheartened if things don't turn out, just share it with us, do some research, make some changes and try again.

My workout yesterday was pretty damn good. I officially decided to stop taking hormonal birth control, and I'd like to focus on getting down to 170 lbs sooner rather than later so Plan B can be a real option for me should I need it. I was still in the BC induced depressive funk yesterday, but was mostly able to rationalize my way around it. I went for a 20 minute walk in the sweltering heat during lunch. Everything in me was screaming not to run yesterday, but I did so as usual (Hamilton soundtrack was def helpful there). I also tried upping some of my weights just a tad and cutting down on rests between sets. Since I've been focusing on losing weight for almost exactly a year now, I do a program my friend designed me that's low-to-moderate weight, moderate-to-high rep, doable with mostly dumbbells. Did my squats at 40 lbs for 3 sets of 12, supersetting with 40 lb bench press, with almost no rest. It's been a long time since I felt like a I might vomit during a workout, but for some reason it was really satisfying? And I was done with lifting and cardio in a little over an hour which gave me so much time yesterday evening to get other stuff done. A few months ago, it literally took me 2 hours from the time I walked in to the gym to the time I left. Really excited to be getting more efficient.

​

Unrelated to fitness, I saw over on r/Breadit today that Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast is on sale for Amazon Kindle (don't have to have a kindle, there's a free app!) for FOUR DOLLARS. I've been wanting to get into bread baking for a long time now, and this book is one of the best and most popular to learn all the things about artisan bread baking (and pizza dough!). It's also usually pretty pricey, so I absolutely jumped all over that sale. I even updated my iPad for the first time in... a few years just to download the Kindle app. I'm going to start reading it on my lunch break in an hour. So, you know, RIP my macros.

The key to brunch for me is the mix of sweet and savory foods. This panini dish definitely walked that line perfectly. I didn’t make the suggested waffles, opting for the sourdough waffles from Nancy Silverton’s La Brea Bakery book. We have been making these waffles for years and I’ve never had better. In a nod to the recipe, I added some maple syrup to the batter and it was actually really great. I will definitely be adding syrup to this batter in the future. The final dish was really interesting. I liked the punch of mustard that was slathered onto the waffles. The only thing I would like would be to find a way to make the paninis more crispy. They were pretty soggy.

For my MetaTheme, I went for the classic brunch cocktail, a Bellini. I liked this recipe because it wasn’t overly sweet or syrupy. The peach puree (had to buy this online because the peaches here aren’t very good at the moment) was nicely tart. I added a splash of simple syrup to sweeten it up a little. Next time I think I will go for some Cava instead of Prosecco so it has a built-in sweetness and there is no need for added sugar.

I've spent the last year focusing primarily on learning to make really, really good bread. It is hard to do. It takes a long time to master even the basics, but that isn't to say that you can't still crank out some good bread. Start with Peter Reinhart's 'Artisan Breads Every Day'. It's a really great book designed with the home baker in mind. Covers pretty much everything you would need to know to make great bread.

As for cultivating yeast, yes I have my own starter. I maintain it by simply keeping it in the fridge. Before using it in a recipe it receives a few feedings over a couple days and is then used to make dough. I made a nearly perfect batch of sourdough boules today with it. Best sourdough I've ever had in my life, not to toot my own horn.

The cookbook is called "Good and Cheap" - it's available as a free ebook or PDF. The author, Leanne Brown, also has a website with those recipes and more (I see I'm not the only person to link it). There are really good recipes!

My wife and I use them a lot. Last week I made her chana masala recipe for my lunches, cost $6 total for all 5 lunches. I admit it got old by the end of the week, but for the first couple days it was really tasty!

Another good resource is budgetbytes (I see someone else also linked that one).

A couple broader "principles" (you may already know them, though):

• Prepared foods are often expensive. Making from scratch is good. But sometimes you don't want to cook and emergency mac'n'cheese is always okay. Add some frozen peas to make it seem healthy
  
• Meat is also often expensive. Tofu and beans (especially dry beans, if you have time to cook them) can be cheaper. Rice and beans is a super filling meal, and you can dress it up with cumin and onions, then garnish with cilantro and sour cream (look up recipes for Dominican rice and beans - "la bandera" - or Costa Rican rice and beans - "gallo pinto")
  
• If this is a temporary situation (some number of months) then you can probably cut a few corners on nutrition and lean heavily on rice, pasta, and other cheap carbs to do the super basic job of being filling. If there's an Asian grocery nearby you can often get a 50 lb. bag of rice for $30-$40 (my wife and I go through one every 8-10 months); Amazon may also help. If your financial situation will last longer (a year or more) then that's a worse solution. But short term, rice'n'spice with a couple fried eggs can go a long way
  
• Do you eat a lot of bread? Bread is not a super expensive item, but you can still save money by baking it yourself. A lot of people rave about Flour, Water, Salt, and Yeast for "artisanal" baking but those are mostly crusty, hearty loaves more than sandwich bread. If you want to go the homemade bread route and mostly need sandwiches, a bread machine might be worth it.
  
  But a lot of these depend on how much time you can commit to food prep. If you're limited on time then your strategy will change a bit.

I started by going through the Bread Bakers Apprentice. I don't really use any of the recipes in there anymore but it gave me a good starting point and it's still a good reference for terminology and methods. Like, it got me really into ciabatta bread from that book. I'm still tweaking my recipe to perfect it.

Starter is a whole different beast. I've used the method found in this youtube series to make mine. He's got a series on sourdough bread, but that channel's non-bread content is pretty fantastic as well.

If you don't have one, I'd highly recommend a kitchen scale. Recipes using grams is so much easier/better than using volume. Also, don't buy those little packets of yeast at the grocery store if you're planning on making bread more than twice a year. You can find two pound bags of dry active yeast on amazon for ~$10.

I love baking bread, omg. I don't even eat it any more but I love to bake it. I bought the book Flour Water Salt Yeast and it is AWESOME and has really great recipes. It's awesome and I love it and I can't suggest it enough.

It's one of those 'personal preference' issues, really.

I've read a lot of the books that others have mentioned, but I haven't bought my own copies, mostly because I'm satisfied with Rose Levy Beranbaum's books, and have stuck with those. She's a good teacher who seems to understand the specific challenges of baking at home with the ingredients I can find. (Lots of other cookbooks seem to be focused on professional type baking situations, and on artisanal baking. Not what I need or want to use.)

Her recipes have been consistently reliable, approachable and the end results have been very tasty.

Some projects are apparently more than I want to manage, so I haven't baked EVERYTHING in her books, but I do own them all, if that tells you anything.

I learned a lot from her Bread bible.
http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bible-Rose-Levy-Beranbaum/dp/0393057941

Her newest, The Baking Bible also looks great (just got it, haven't yet worked my way completely through it.

http://www.amazon.com/Baking-Bible-Rose-Levy-Beranbaum/dp/1118338618/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

There are a lot of different approaches to this kind of project. Along the way in my experiments, I learned that I'm not really all that fascinated with rustic artisanal breads, and that most professional cookbooks just aren't what I'm looking for in the way of specific advice on projects I can manage at home. For one thing, living where I do, finding top quality flours is a problem (i.e., online only).

Editing to add: I think it's probably best to buy a cookbook produced in your own country, whatever that might be. For example, ingredients can be hard to source, and wording can be a confusing issue. (British cookbooks have given me a lot of great ideas, but living in the US, I find I need to double check my understanding of the instructions and the ingredients. Metric measurements are a godsend, though, they simplify a lot. Other measuring standards can be more confusing.)

Not OP, but bread in general with a Dutch oven is super easy. All you need is time (8-18 hour to proof) and 4 ingredients—water, salt, yeast and flour. This is my go to easy no knead dutch oven bread recipe. Note, it is not sourdough. I’ve found that water temp at 113.5F seems to work the best and I substitute APF for bread flour at a 1:1 ratio.

You can then get fancy with a proofing bowl like OP used to get the geocentric circles and also start playing around with different starters/flours. You can use whole wheat flour in the above recipe but remember you can’t substitute whole wheat flour 1:1, the max you can do is 50% whole wheat flour so use 1.5 cups whole wheat flour and 1.5 cups APF/bread flour and increase the water to 1 3/4 cups of water. Check your local grocery store, they may have sourdough starters you can buy.

Experiment and have fun with it. I make bread probably 3-4 times per month. The hardest part is just planning out the time to proof the dough. If you really get into it, you’ll probably like this book Flour Water Salt Yeast.

LOL, any bread that can actually be called bread will have crust harder than Wonder bread - they make a point of having no discernable crust, other than for looks.

Seriously, hunt up "Pain de Mie" in your area - mie is pronounced "me" as in "you and...". The focus of it will be less crust, more crumb.

Sorry to hear you ran into bread with bad crusts. Keep in mind that good bread is not purely formula so it is possible to hit a bad loaf now and again. Especially if it's been left out to dry, of course. You'll find bagging in plastic will make most any fresh bread much softer. You'll loose the crunch, of course, part of the experience, but get closer to what you happen to enjoy so that's a good thing.

I make soft-crusted bread for my partner who finds anything with a discernable crust "hard on the teeth", even though I am saddened to do so and lose the joy of a good crust. I do make crunchy bread for myself, though - see the blog I linked to above. So I do get that some folk like their crusts soft to non-existant. Hopefully, however, that doesn't translate to not liking flavourful bread, since it's easy to just grab the sliced bagged stuff and get locked into the idea "this is what bread tastes like".

Can't help you with locating a good bakery since I will guess you're not on Vancouver Island in Canada. Even then if it's a chain, it's nearly guaranteed they use shortcuts to produce large volume or (gasp) do like supermarkets and get their dough pre-mixed from factories or loaves par-baked and merely finish the baking in-store which gets the aroma that gets people buying. It's all very much calculated to get money out of your wallet.

I'd recommend you hunt up small owner-run bakeries where they really care about their product and see what they have for sandwich bread, again this will tend towards Pain de Mie. Or try challah dough bread which makes a lot more than just typical braided challah bread. It's got a very tender crust, in most any incarnation you might run into (seeded, flavoured, etc.).

Or learn to bake on your own - maybe take a bread making course at a local college or store - and then you have complete control of the final product.

If you pick up Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice, there are a lot of great breads to make in there; the very first one, Anadama, is surprisingly tasty (and soft-crusted), even if it looks weird at first reading. It gets into the whys and hows, without going too deep, and has lots of bread porn pictures to keep you intrigued.

Hope this helped out.

Name: Paul

Age: 25

Location: Minneapolis

Pics (of you, pets, whatever etc.,) http://i.imgur.com/yi0rf7P.jpg (It was for grindr and my only recent pic, please don't judge!)

Instagram/snapchat/other social media: https://www.instagram.com/morelikebrocialism/


What are your plans for Valentine's day?

• No idea, probably game with another single friend
  
  Is there anything you're looking forward to this month?
  
  
• Not quite in this month but the release of the Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild!
  
  What TV shows are you looking forward to having come back on for the spring?
  
  
• Very much looking forward to Legion, it seems like there are a ton of great shows coming out soon though
  
  What's one good recipe you would like to share?
  
  
• Not a recipe but a book. If you like baking artisan bread check out this book, it's incredibly well written and helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X
  
  What are you currently listening to/watching/reading?
  
  
• Just started reading Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher and it is very insightful and provocative http://www.zero-books.net/books/capitalist-realism
  
  In your opinion, what is the superior pet?
  
  
• Dogs, obviously
  
  What is one subreddit you think everyone should check out?
  
  
• I will revisit this one later

Alright, so the way to get from where you are now to this is to use a cast iron pot and follow Jim Lahey's directions here. Go to the library and get his book, both that one and the new My Pizza are awesome. The cast iron pot traps steam which combined with the high heats lets you get good 'spring' and a nice rich crispy crust. I've done this recipe with lots of diffent flours and they have much less of an effect on the overall outcome than good technique. It can be a bit scary handling a 500 degree cast iron pot but after a few attempts it gets pretty easy. A Lodge cast iron dutch oven like this will work great but I suggest replacing the knob on top with a metal version found here. Good luck!

Thanks for the amazing opportunity!

Lets start off with these amazing badass running pants, perfect for everything from working out to lounging about! I chose this because I'm in serious need of new workout pants! I've been wearing my old highschool sweatpants to brave the icy cold weather and they are starting to tear in multiple places and i don't know how long they will survive >.< These not only coming in a VARIETY of styles, they have almost 1000 positive reviews and look extremely comfy!

I am HUGE into cooking/food and have been trying to improve by bread baking skill recently and believe that the Bread Baker's Apprentice would vastly improve my ability to do so! it not only breaks down why a specific bread recipe needs a specific ingredient, but how it compares both chemically and physically to other types of breads and how to do everything from proper kneading techniques and processes!

This Galaxy infused wallet of ultimate beauty would be an amazing replacement for my also dying wallet that I got about 12 years ago! Being able to go about and NOT have my change and important cards falling out would be quite helpful <3 PLUS. I am huge fan of everything and all things space/galaxy/cosmic and all!

I’ve been experimenting with multiple bagel recipes over the last couple of weeks using a myriad of different flours, yeasts, and techniques.

The Serious Eats bagels (left) created a slightly tighter crumb that did not fall so much. Otherwise, I can’t say there was a huge difference in overall chew. Stella Parks uses a Japanese technique called “yukone” that is supposed to aid in preservation and longevity.

I cannot seem to prevent the Chefsteps bagels (right) from losing height in the boiling and baking process. These bagels have a fantastically chewy texture but the crumb is not as tight as I was hoping for. The flavor is very good though.

Edit: I’ve also made bagels according to The Bread Baker’s Apprentice that were perfectly good bagels but not as extraordinary as I’m hoping for. The article describing professional bagel shops did encourage me to buy a special high-protein (14%) flour and Stella Parks made me start questioning the yeast I’ve previously used so I’ve been experimenting with instant dry yeast. I’m planning to try the method produced by ATK using vital wheat gluten but I don’t know if this step becomes moot since I already have a high-gluten flour.

Well it will depend on the recipe and type of crust you’re going for, but the salt and yeast amounts are going to be much smaller, in the single percentiles and even into tenths of a percentage with the yeast sometimes.

As for type of yeast, everything’s gravy — meaning you’ll find people using each and any kind. I think the easiest to start out with are the ones using instant yeast.

I first scratched my pizza itch the same way many around here probably did, with Kenji’s Foolproof Pan Pizza
It’s a great place to start and is still my favorite kind of “home pizza” so far tbh. I also like to start new projects with a book if possible, and while we can debate their techniques up, down, and sideways, I think Forkish’s Elements of Pizza would still be my go-to for just starting out. Beddia’s Pizza Camp is also a strong contender, but personally I think his ideas play in better after you’ve tried a few others first.

And don’t be fooled! I’m by no means any kind of master and would still consider myself “in training,” but I am a good researcher, so I sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Edit: a word

So first things first, no baker whose work I respect uses measuring cups. Volume measurement is an anachronistic method of measurement. The reason is that baking is based on ratios of the mass of products to each other, and something like flour can vary by about 50% if you're going by volume. I.e. a cup can weigh between 4 and 6 ounces. What that means is that you need a scale. The good news is that scales are fairly cheap. It's like 30 bucks to get a good one. I like oxo 5 pound scale with the pull out display.

The next thing is that I tend to stay away from all of the cookbooks written by people who don't work in the industry. Chefs have had to stand up to years of criticism and constant learning to get to a place where they can even begin to think about putting out a cookbook. The two pastry cook books that I like the most are Thomas Keller's book, Bouchon bakery, and Christina Tosi's book, milk bar.

Bouchon bakery is a super French book (as is the bakery), so I would recommend getting it if your son is interested in making things like bread, croissants, eclairs, Madelines, macarons, cakes, etc. Things that you would think of coming out of a traditional patisserie. The book is fabulously written and gorgeous. It is incredibly approachable and in my opinion, doesn't require any outside knowledge of baking, although being a good baker certainly helps. If I were to go solely based on what I thought was the best book, I wouldn't go any further than this one

That being said, I love Christina Tosi's milk bar. Her style is more of a traditional American style, so lots of cookies, cupcakes, pies, etc. Her book isn't as well written, not as pretty, and requires a bit more knowledge of baking (but certainly not a ton). It is, however so warm and inviting and reflects her personality so much that you can't help but smile add you read her expositions about some of her recipes and past. Her cookies are so crazy awesome and delicious, that the single method alone is worth the price of admission.

The one caveat I would say is that both books will STRONGLY suggest you get a stand mixer. While neither book requires it, there are some recipes that will be very daunting without one; I sure as hell wouldn't want to do Tosi's creaming method (for making the aforementioned cookies) by hand, that's for sure. That being said, though, people baked for millennia without one, so if you don't have one, you certainly don't have to buy one before making most if not all of the recipes in either book.

NINJA EDIT:
Links to the books
Bouchon Bakery
Milk bar

I mean, honestly it's hard to take your question seriously. You very clearly simply haven't looked at what's available, but still wanna come here to laugh at the stupid americans that don't know bread.

You're just wrong. Crusty bread is everywhere in the US.

Walmart sells rye flour: https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=rye%20flour&cat_id=976759&typeahead=rye%20fl and spelt flour: https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=spelt%20flour&cat_id=976759&typeahead=spelt

They also sell baguettes and some other rustic style loafs, though in general for more artisan style bread you'd be better going off going to someplace other than walmart. Walmart is all about cheap and high volume stuff.

This is one of the most popular bread cookbooks in the US: https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

I've been to Ken's bakery many times, and can assure you they have nice very crusty bread: https://kensartisan.com/bakery

Here's another regional chain that's popular up here: https://www.instagram.com/grandcentralbakery/

As you can see, plenty of crusty breads of all styles.

You'll be able to find similar bakeries in any city larger than about 50k people, and pretty often even in smaller towns.

Sliced sandwich bread exists for that exact purpose: it's easy to toast, and is a great for making some styles of sandwiches. Crusty rustic loaves are not somehow universally better, that's just *your* preference.

For what it's worth, I think that The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum does an excellent job of detailing what's going on in the baking process so that you can experiment on your own and create your own recipes. Off the top of my head, I believe it goes into a fair amount of detail on what happens when you under/over rise bread, the effect of dough starters (from simple night-before starters to making your own sourdough starter from scratch), the impact of water content on the finished bread, what different glazes/coatings (ie water, flour, eggwash, etc.) do to the crust, and a bunch of other great information. It's not necessarily as scientific as you might expect from homebrewing resources, but it does provide a lot of useful, easily understandable information to help you make bread.

Overall, I've been finding that breadmaking is a lot like homebrewing—when you first start out, the number of "rules" involved is intimidating, but as you get better you realize that although there are definitely a few things you need to get right, most everything else is pretty flexible.

It depends entirely on your needs and your standards. We bought this inexpensive Oster last summer and love it. Our motivation was that our kids are getting older and starting to devour a lot of bread. Going through 3-4 decent loaves of bread each week at $3 a pop adds up. Is the bread machine loaf as good as what I can make by hand? No. But it's still pretty tasty, a basic recipe costs about $1 in ingredients, and I can pop out a simple sandwich loaf with about 10 minutes of hands-on time, including cleanup. You can't touch that hands-on time by hand, even with a stand mixer (which we also own). And if you're willing to test and tweak recipes a bit and willing to manually intervene at times (shaping the final loaf, for example), you can turn out some darn good bread with it.

The big question in buying a bread machine is how big you want your loaves to be. Specifically, 1.5 lb loaves vs 2 lb loaves. Most machines can make 2 lb loaves, but doing it well really requires a two-paddle model, which are larger, significantly more expensive, and more prone to breakage. If you can live with 1.5 lb loaves, you can get a smaller, cheaper, more durable single-paddle model like the one we have. A 1.5 lb loaf is basically a sandwich for all four of us plus a couple end hunks to gnaw on or a couple extra toast slices. So we make 1 or 2 of those loaves a week and supplement them with store-bought loaves. Still a decent cost savings - I suspect we've already paid for the $70 cost of the unit.

If you get a machine of any type or price, I strongly recommend buying this cookbook along with it. There will be recipes included with the machine, but they don't go into much detail and avoid specifying slightly hard-to-find ingredients like SAF yeast or vital wheat gluten that can really help you get better loaves. Just a little bit of knowledge and investment in the ingredients and technique yields much better results.

not sure how much I can help...

I've "captured" several starters over the years. I use the pineapple juice and rye flour method described here: https://breadtopia.com/make-your-own-sourdough-starter/ (see the rather long essay linked from that page for a truly in-depth analysis of the process). I really enjoy the result from a whole-grain coarse rye flour I get from a local specialty supplier, but i've had success with normal grocery store rye as well. After about 3 or 4 days of reliable activity, I transition off juice to plain water and a 50/50 white/whole wheat flour "spiked" with a little of the left-over rye.

Once I have a healthy starter, I use the Tartine recipe/process from the Tartine Bread book, but since we don't eat so much bread (only two of us) I usually do a 500g half recipe for a single loaf.

Good luck!!

edit: forgot to mention, i don't really put much stock in the "float" test... I typically just look for lots of bubbles. I also keep my starter in glass or clear plastic which aids in checking for healthy bubbles

Here is my photo album with different angles.

bottom

crumb

This is my first try at making something other than no knead bread. I followed the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day recipe here and here pretty closely, but added a bit more water to the poolish because I thought it looked too dry. I baked it at 475F for 25 minutes instead of the instructed 20 minutes to give it more color.

I think it came out alright for my first try. I'm surprised that it tastes pretty good - it has a nice crispy, crackling crust that shatters when I bite into it. It's seasoned well too, the salt brings out a lot of flavor. The crumb is more dense than I hoped for - I think it's because I over kneaded the dough. Obviously, I need to work on the shape.

Honestly, I prefer this drier type of bread compared to all of the no knead bread I've been making - it's not so moist and spongy in the middle.

Tips and critiques welcome!

So most of my cookbooks are either text dense reference manuals or obnoxiously difficult like The French Laundry Cookbook, but here's a few that are relatively simple with excellent photography:

La Cocina - Cookbook from an organization in San Francisco that teaches low income people to successfully grow food businesses. Photos are incredible.

-

The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook - Excellent photos with a lot of obscure produce.

-

Ad Hoc at Home - Thomas Keller's family style recipes with wonderful photography.

-

Flour Water Salt Yeast - Focused on baking bread and making pizza, but a lot of step by step photos and some awesome pictures of the final product.

If you have done any lurking on Breadit, you'll notice that the community is a big fan of Flour Water Salt Yeast (FWSY), and the Kindle edition is only 2.99. He does a great job explaining the keeping and care of sourdough starter, as well as different flour combinations that make for a tasty starter. It's also nice because he gives examples of how to play with recipes and starter to really make it your own, as well as explaining (with pictures) about folding, and mixing.

His book is also great because it gives you some a variety of recipes that include all sorts of fermentation, so you can practice with something that is a little easier and work your way up to a full sourdough style bread. I'm also pretty new to sourdough bread and it's been a very helpful piece of literature as I've been experimenting with my bakes.

NYT no knead bread - best if you have a Dutch oven (you can get one amazon for like 30 bucks)

Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Rolls - best cinnamon rolls ever, I usually half the recipe. For frosting, hers is a bit too extravagant. I just use powered sugar, melted butter and water/milk til you get the consistency you like

Sourdough Starter Recipe - it cuts out buying yeast and the need to prove it. This will also serve as a catalyst for other types of bread in the future.

FWSY - the Holy Grail of bread cooking books

And as someone already pointed out r/breadit

Also, not sure what country you're in, but try catching the Great British Baking Show on Netflix (streams in US). I've been watching it recently and it's definitely inspired me to bake all sorts of goodies.

Good luck!

Anadama bread came from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and the wheat berry whole wheat loaves are from Bread Alone.

(Etiquette Q: Should I post the whole formulas here? I'm at work right now and edit them in later.)

For the Anadama bread, I find that following the formula gives me pancake batter. I had to add a significant amount of extra flour to get the dough just to come to a ball (well over a cup), then a lot more during kneading to get the "definitely not sticky" consistency called for. I had to add more salt to compensate (tasted the dough as I worked). I haven't checked the hydration percentages as written to see if there's a typo, but I'll do that when I have the books in front of me.

For the whole wheat bread, I went off the formula a bit. I mixed the dough fairly wet, then did three stretch-and-folds at 30 minute intervals instead of the 15-minute knead called for in the recipe. Since there is a high percentage of wheat, I wanted the best chance for an open, chewy crumb, and I think I nailed it. The texture and flavor of the whole wheat berries in there with the lovely chewy crumb is just delightful.

Polenta, wheat berries and sifted whole wheat flour came from my trip up to Maine Grains in Skowhegan, ME, when I was up for the Kneading Conference this year.

White flour was plain old Gold Medal AP flour.

I hands down strongly recommend How Baking Works (for the science behind baking and ingredients used) and Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft (for recipes and methods). These two books will literally cover almost everything you need to know in detail and are awesome reference books for learning methods and recipes. I use them daily.
I would also add The Professional Pastry Chef : Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry as a third book if you are willing to get it, but the first i mentioned are better to start off with.

They might have copies available at your local library, but if they don't you can always go down to Barnes and Noble if you are in the US and find them there for free reading. I think amazon/half.com has the best prices though.

They are a bit expensive new, but used on amazon/half.com or buying older issues is really reasonable in my opinion. You can get the older issue copies without missing out anything important. They really only do minor changes to the new issues. The core of the book doesn't change much. I can't recommend these books enough for people who want to learn baking in depth on their own.


http://www.amazon.com/How-Baking-Works-Exploring-Fundamentals/dp/0470392673/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405381058&sr=1-1&keywords=science+behind+baking





http://www.amazon.com/Baking-Pastry-Mastering-Art-Craft/dp/047005591X/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405381103&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=cuklinary+instute+of+america+baking

These look icky. Recipe looks unreliable, too. If you want a good bagel recipe, I suggest you buy this book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes-Revolutionizes/dp/0312362919/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348260951&sr=8-1

...and follow the bagel recipe in here, because it's delicious and much better. Actually, all of their bread recipes are awesome, and super fast to make, and because it's homemade it's definitely budget-friendly. I have this book and their Artisan Pizza and Flatbreads book as well, and I love 'em.

This was my first attempt at it – and I'm not much of a baker myself. I think it turned out wonderfully though. The blog, linked below, does a great writeup on the process. Highly recommended!

Basic No-Knead Bread from Frugal Living NW


slightly adapted from Jim Lahey’s My Bread

• 6 cups bread flour (recommended) or all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
  
• 1/2 t. instant or active-dry yeast
  
• 2 1/2 t. salt
  
• 2 2/3 c. cool water
  
  

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the water and stir until all the ingredients are well incorporated; the dough should be wet and sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest 12-18 hours on the counter at room temperature. When surface of the risen dough has darkened slightly, smells yeasty, and is dotted with bubbles, it is ready.
   
2. Lightly flour your hands and a work surface. Place dough on work surface and sprinkle with more flour. Fold the dough over on itself once or twice and, using floured fingers, tuck the dough underneath to form a rough ball.
   
3. Generously dust a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with enough flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran to prevent the dough from sticking to the towel as it rises; place dough seam side down on the towel and dust with more flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran. Cover with the edges or a second cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours, until it has doubled in size.
   
4. After about 1 1/2 hours, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot, such as a cast-iron Dutch oven, in the oven as it heats. When the dough has fully risen, carefully remove pot from oven. Remove top towel from dough and slide your hand under the bottom towel; flip the dough over into pot, seam side up. Shake pan once or twice if dough looks unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.
   
5. Cover and bake for 40 minutes. Uncover and continue baking for 10-15 more minutes, until the crust is a deep chestnut brown. The internal temperature of the bread should be around 200 degrees. You can check this with a meat thermometer, if desired.
   
6. Remove the bread from the pot and let it cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

No real need to buy a book unless you want to this http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393057941/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1420742471&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=51IPIUozm7L&ref=plSrch is a great one.

I would check out www.thefreshloaf.com it's probably my favorite bread site around. A lot of the recipes deal with ratios and weights. That can be a bit confusing, but a quick google search for conversion to volumetric measurements will square you away. If you're serious about finding good recipes this site has them. Don't get scared away by the funky measurements and ratios!

I also love this type of bread. It's a bit tricky because there's a lot of extra chemicals in there that make your yeast so funny things. Probably the most important thing to do is to soak any of the seeds you're using, make sure your yeast is thoroughly proofed and read to ferment, and of course proper fermentation of the dough. In my experiences all but soaking takes some trial and error. The fermentation process has a lot to do (for us home baker types) with texture, touch, and what the dough looks like.

Good luck!

Yeast keeps getting better, due to development of better strains. Active dry was a big improvement over cake yeast both in terms of robustness and speed of action, and rapid rise is an improvement over active dry. Rapid rise doesn't even require proofing; you can just add it dry with the other ingredients and go.

If you want to treat yourself, may I suggest you get a copy of Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Look at what a great rating it has on Amazon. Here's a vid of Peter Reinhart's TED talk to get you stoked.

Here's another important bread vid, Jim Lahey's No-Knead recipe.

The idea of using a bread machine rustles my jimmies; I use the no-knead method (google it, it's everywhere) for sandwich bread that we eat every day, and then sometimes on weekends I'll make a rustic loaf to go with meals that I make in the more traditional method.

Looking for a bread 'recipe' is somewhat of a fallacy. Most people who take bread even a little seriously use the baker's percentage (once again, google that shit) and weighing ingredients instead of measuring by volume.

The baker's percentage gives you a template of proportions that yield certain results. By manipulating those proportions of flour/grains/water/yeast/salt you get different breads. A french loaf is still a french loaf if you make it with whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour, as long as you understand how the change in protein and such will affect the bread, and adjust your other ingredients and methods accordingly.

The only accurate way to adjust those ratios is by using a reasonably accurate scale instead of measuring cups. A good scale (not even a mediocre one) can be had from Amazon for about $20. This is the one that I use, and it's paid for itself several times over since I started making bread about two years ago.

These two concepts, which go hand-in-hand, elevated my bread making from dicking around in the kitchen to a near science.

After about six months of making bread every week, you should check out The Bread Builders. When I originally bought it I didn't understand enough about bread to get much out of it, but now I find it to be a huge resource for adjusting my methods and techniques. There's a lot of esoteric stuff in there about microbiology and gluten strings, which is cool, but essentially useless unless you have some kind of context. There's also the whole second half of the book, which is almost entirely about building and using wood fired brick ovens to bake bread; something that I hope to have the funds to build one day.

You can check out /r/breaddit if you want, but I find it to be a bit of a circlejerk on seeing how much cheese/nutella/olives/onions people can cram in a recipe before it starts to look like a casserole instead of bread. Also, they have a hard on for sourdoughs. Sourdoughs are cool, but at this point I think they could use their own subreddit.

Good luck, I guess.
Good luck

I do have a house strain I harvested from my coolship. I've used it a few times. Its good, but nothing fantastic. I've also built up starters from Crooked Stave and Allagash that have come out well.

Commercially I use most the ECY blends I can get my hands on, ECY20 and ECY01 being favorites. Roselare, Lambic blend from Wyeast, Brett C, Brett Troix are also ones I enjoy.

I plan on using UPack to get most stuff home. It's by volume instead of weight, so I'll just fill all the kettles, etc. I'm trying to figure out a way to plastic line my kegs and fill them with grain, ingredients, etc since they're much cheaper here and it doesn't make sense to ship empty containers.

Bread info can be found here and shaping is on the same page. I use a method close to the Tartine method, and I highly recommend this book (although I do go through it on my blog.) Lately I've been shaping using more of a king arthur method and have been getting great crumb. I enjoy making batard, personally.

I suggest you guys buy the book "The Elements of Pizza" by Ken Forkish, and check out some of his recipes.

He explains the how and why for every recipe, and you get really delicious results. I was amazed at what I was able to make, being generally pretty terrible at baking.

I made my own sauce because I quite like that one. It's essentially a marinara sauce. I just used some good canned tomatoes, but I crushed them in a colander to get rid of some of the liquid, because I wanted a less runny marinara, to help ensure the pizza dough didn't get soggy.

I topped it with whatever I wanted that day. As I recall, I went with black olive, pepperoni, fresh mozzarella slices, grated parmeggiano reggiano, and I seem to recall some shallot sliced in thin rings.

One of the best pizzas I ever had, honestly.

Best variant I've managed at home was from Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. I like the overnight with poolish recipe. Once you've split the dough into balls, you can refrigerate them for several days. If you can't conjure up the recipe via Google, his book is well worth the money.

EDIT: Sheesh, some people just want stuff handed to them:

Baker's formula:

Ingredient | Quantity in Poolish | Total Recipe Quantity | Baker's Percentage
-----------|---------------------|-----------------------|-------------------
Flour | 500 g | 1,000 g | 100%
Water | 500 g | 750 g | 75%
Salt | 0 | 20 g | 2%
Yeast | 0.4 g | 0.4 g | 0.04%

This recipe is straight flour, water, salt and yeast, using a starter. That's as "authentic" as it gets.

I'm not going to transcribe the entire book for you here. Forkish goes into great detail about how to make a poolish, why it's important, proper hand mixing technique, etc, and it's all beyond the scope of a reddit comment. Suffice to say that you're looking for a roughly 3x rise in both the poolish and final mix stage. If you start the poolish using 80 F water at 6 PM, you'll be doing the final mix with 105 F water at roughly 8 AM, and shaping the dough balls some 6 hours later, which you can then refrigerate for a couple hours or a couple days.

But seriously, the price of the book is less than what you'd spend on two good pizzas. Totally worth it: https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X/

Also, make fresh bread if you have the time. You don't even need a bread-maker if you don't want to pay up for the machine (I don't use one), although obviously that means more kneading time and work. But really, once you make the dough, the "work" primarily consists of letting it sit. Our family makes bread from this book : http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Apprentice-Mastering-Extraordinary/dp/1580082688
And it is fantastic. I am living on my own for the summer and have already made some. Obviously if you're super busy, it's probably not worth the time, but if you have some weekend time or something, fresh bread is the best. And the satisfaction of knowing you created the loaf from start to finish is totally worth it.

Take a look at the following books which your local library may possibly have. All deal with whole grain breads and breads made using non-standard flours.

Tartine Book No.3: It's the Tartine round loaf in a million whole grain variations, while also including some interesting pan loaves.

Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: Recipes for pretty much every type of whole grain bread. Uses a lot of specialized ingredients, and complex multi-stage recipes, and contains a ton of information.

Peter Reinhart's Bread Revolution: Not familiar with this book but it looks neat, probably advanced if you're just learning about using alternative grains to white flour but still interesting.

Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry: This is a personal favorite book, and the vast majority of the recipes use whole grains. Everything I've made out of this has been excellent, although some recipes are lacking in how-to type details that might not be obvious to a novice baker.

I'm sorry dear Baker but you cannot swap out white flour for a different grain without disappointing yourself with the results. You are going to need a recipe designed for whichever grain(s) you would like to use.

There are a ton of resources mentioned on /r/Breadit.

Highly noted are: Peter Reinharts Artisan Breads Everyday.

and The Bread Bible. When I searched Amazon for that title I received results of at least 3 different books with that name. Perhaps someone can refresh me and inform you which one of them is the 'popular' one. If there is only one otherwise take your pick.

So basically it comes down to finding a new recipe my dear.

My single tip I have for white bread is add 1tbsp of a high end Balsamic vinegar to the liquid. It adds a nice complex flavour to the finished bread.

Good luck.

I've been baking bread semi-regularly for about a year now with just my sourdough starter or yeast, flour, water, & salt. It does take several steps over 24-36 hours, but it's really super simple once you get it down, only uses one large bowl & then a small bit of counter space to actually form the loaf. The method I mostly follow now is from the Tartine Bread book, which really helps you make amazing bread.

At first, I don't think it sounds that simple to most people, but just throwing it out there as a suggestion because it's totally worth it to me to plan bread baking in my schedule, it's cheap, & could easily be done in a college suite.

I don't have a mixer (mostly due to not having space for one), but I love making bread. My solution has been no-knead methods, which replaces the kneading effort with parking it in the fridge overnight. You still get the gluten development with the added bonus of additional flavor.

The best (and most simple) pizza dough recipe I have ever used comes from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day.

breadit is nice, but it's mostly photos of baked loaves. Sometimes there are recipes, and if you have recipe questions or goals in mind, it's a response desert.

I, too, recommend baking bread by hand instead of using a bread maker. I also recommend this book. Great recipes, wide variety of recipe styles and options, and it'll give anyone the necessary information to make amazing bread with ease.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bread-Bakers-Apprentice-Extraordinary/dp/1580082688

Martha Stewart, Dorie Greenspan, and Rose Levy Berenbaum are my go-to's for classic recipes with none of the low fat/no sugar/no gluten stuff.

Any classic French basic pastry recipes like for pastry cream, choux, croissants, etc, are always going to be chock-full of butter and sugar and the good stuff, too. Check out Eugenie Kitchen on YouTube for some very easy, classic French recipes (by a very sweet Korean woman).

Here are my favorite baking cookbooks:

Rose Levy Berenbaum - The Baking Bible

Rose Levy Berenbaum - The Cake Bible

Dorie Greenspan - Baking: From My Home To Yours

Martha Stewart - Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

Martha Stewart - Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share

Smitten Kitchen is also great for desserts that are a bit fancier, but still classically rich/traditional ingredients.


I LOVE BAKING.

I make my own bread about once or twice a week and then can store the dough in the refrigerator for up to about 2 weeks. Whenever I'm craving some I whip up a batch on the baking stone and its good to go. I will never go back if I can manage not to. All you need is flour, water, yeast (you can culture your own or keep little bags in the fridge), and salt. I generally add olive oil and whatever else I am feeling inquisitive with at the time. Last week I made some with chipotle salsa mixed in. I have a kitchenaid mixer, not cheap but IMO worth it that simplifies the process immensely. I love making my own bread and people would be surprised at how easy it is. If you are interested in the way I learned check out the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

How Baking Works by Paula Figoni really helps break how individual ingredients react to heat and to other ingredients in baking.

Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Formulas by Jeffrey Hamelman is the bible of bread baking. There are other bread books out there, and many of them are good, but if you only buy one this one should be it.

The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum is a great home baker's guide to traditional baking, but almost every bakery I've worked in had a copy of this laying around. It's a great reference, and the fact that every recipe is broken down into weights makes it possible to convert many of her recipes into professional production, with tweaks.

Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller is a great supplemental baking book and worth checking out.

Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, an amazing book that got me started on breadmaking.

• 1 head of garlic
  
• 3c (1.5lb) lukewarm water
  
• 1 1/2 T yeast
  
• 1 1/2 T salt
  
• 1 1/2 T sugar
  
• 1 mashed potato (book says 1c, but I used one potato.)
  
• 6 1/2 c (2 lb) all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur)
  
• Cornmeal to keep the bottom from sticking
  
  

1. Wrap a head of garlic in foil, roast at 400 F for about 30 minutes. I also baked a potato in foil for about 40 minutes and mashed it, since I didn't have pre-mashed potatoes handy.
   
2. Mix the yeast, salt, sugar, potato, and garlic (squeeze it out) and add the water. Use a stand mixer or lots of arm strength, and mix until combined. Don't knead.
   
3. Cover with a cloth and rest at room temperature for about two hours; dough will rise and then flatten.
   
   The dough can be used immediately or refrigerated for up to a week.
   
   When ready to bake:
   
   
4. Dust the surface of the dough with flour and take a 1 lb (grapefruit-sized) lump out. Dust it with more flour, and stretch the sides around to form a ball. Rest on a pizza peel or cutting board dusted with cornmeal for an hour (40 minutes if fresh, unrefrigerated dough.)
   
5. 20 minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 450 and put a baking stone in the center. Put a broiler pan on a rack underneath the stone.
   
6. Sprinkle the loaf with flour and slash a 1/4 inch deep cross, scallop, or tic-tac-toe pattern in the top to allow for rising.
   
7. Slide the loaf onto the hot stone, and pour hot (or boiling) water into the broiler pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes, and try to avoid opening the oven. The top will turn deep brown and the bread will sound hollow when you knock on it. Overcooking is hard to do; you don't want to be undercooked!
   
   Let it cool, and eat! (If you're impatient, like me, the crumb will be pretty moist.)

Wow. You're super insecure about this, aren't you? I can't think of any other reason you would be so condescending when someone disagrees with you.

Of course there are many different types of bread, but to say that bread usually has dairy in it is just factually incorrect. Bread cooked with just flour, water, salt and yeast is absolutely delicious. It is the epitome of European bread (or, as we in the west self-centredly call it, bread). Maybe you enjoy it more with extra ingredients, and I'm not going to say you're wrong for doing so. I'm not going to call your bread "taste-less".

What you're doing is pretending that the culinary history of bread doesn't exist, because you're trying to prove someone wrong. Acting as if the bread you learned to cook is the only way that professionals cook is, frankly, astonishing.

Here's a book written by a professional: Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. I'm sure you can guess why it's called that.

Here's a book by the French Culinary Institute: The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Baking. Here's one of the reviews that they list under praise:

> "To make a perfect loaf of bread, the baker needs just five essential ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast—and this indispensable book!”

>—Iacopo Falai, Owner of Falai, Caffe Falai, and Falai Panetteria"

Of course, these people must be amateurs compared to your experience of:

> hundreds of loaves of bread

Two great books about baking bread are The Bread Baker's Apprentice and Tartine Bread. Both will teach you how bread baking works, as well as giving you recipes for many great breads. I much prefer baking bread like this, rather than using a bread maker. Hope that helps.

Yep! It's really great, and way easier than you'd expect. I don't make my every day bread, but anytime I'm having people over for dinner or making something special I bake bread. And sometimes I do it just because! I'd recommend checking out Flour Water Yeast if you're definitely interested, or check out some of the beginner bread recipes on the King Arthur Flour site. There is probably a bread subreddit too... Actually, not sure why I never looked.

Bonus: bread from scratch is a gateway to making pizza from scratch, so you can't go wrong!

So a few off the top of my head:

1. The Professional Chef. Geared towards professional chefs but a great resource.
   
   
2. On Food and Cooking. A classic. Not really a 'cookbook' per se but rather a book that discusses history and food science.
   
   
3. The now out-of-print Williams and Sonoma Mastering Series. Specifically, their book on sauces - the others are solid but not quite as good. Those books were how I personally learned to cook. (still can find used)
   
   
4. The Flavor Bible. Obligatory. Eventually you grow out of it a bit, but it's still a great resource to have around.
   
   
5. Flour Water Salt Yeast. I just got this book recently this last Christmas, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit.

/r/Breadit

As others have said, bread is surprisingly easy. In my opinion, in terms of effort-to-payoff it is probably one of the best things to cook. Loads of fun with lots of room to develop, practice, and perfect too.

I'm a big advocate of The Bread Baker's Apprentice as a beginner's resource for learning the fundamentals of baking, why things are done in certain ways, and so on. It's also full of just about any bread recipe you could want.

I doubly recommend the digital kitchen scale & Cook's Illustrated cookbooks. I also recommend:

• Sideswipe blade if she has a KitchenAid mixer
  
• silpat mat
  
• no-knead bread cookbook
  
• gift certificate to Container Store or Amazon so she can pick out some new bulk food storage containers (I happen to be partial to these OXO ones)
  
• gift certificate to Penzeys Spices
  
  If money is no object, how about a promise to a romantic dinner for 2 at a top rated restaurant like Per Se?

Get a copy of The Bread Baker's Apprentice, read it. The first half of the book is a pretty in depth explanation of how bread works, and all the stages of making it. The second half is a bunch of great recipes that will be pretty easy to make once you've read the book and come out great. Though, do note that most of them take at least 2 days to make.

Some how my text got lost so here it is again:

This is my second time making brioche and it came out really good this time. The recipe made a lot of dough so I made it into little brioche rolls, to plated loaves (one big, one small) and I even turned the left over dough into a tart crust. I got the recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Bread-Bakers-Apprentice-Cutting-edge/dp/1580082688) and it was super easy to make.

Recipe:

Ingredients
(For the sponge)

• 2.25 oz strong white bread flour
  
  
• 1 tablespoon instant yeast
  
  
• 4 oz (1/2 cup) whole milk, lukewarm
  
  (For the dough)
  
  
• 5 eggs
  
  
• 16 oz strong white bread flour
  
  
• 2 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  
  
• 16 oz butter, room temperature (yes, that is a lot!)
  
  Method
  
  

1. Mix together all the ingredients for the sponge and leave for 20 minutes or until frothy.
   
   
2. Add the eggs to the sponge and mix together.
   
   
3. Add the sugar, salt and bread flour and mix to form a rough ball. Leave for 5 minutes to "let the gluten develop" (it will be a bit liquidy)
   
   
4. Now in a mixer start kneading the dough, adding a small piece of butter and waiting for it to be kneaded in, then adding another piece of butter until all is used up.
   
   
5. The dough should be very smooth and soft so place it in the fridge overnight to chill.
   
   
6. The dough is ready to use!

I have a lot of bread books, and I will recommend Hamelman's Bread until I die. And then I will be cremated with it.

I've been baking bread professionally for 6 or 7 years and it is, by far, the book I reference the most. Accessible for beginners, but substantial enough for a professional. The levain (sourdough) section is wonderful and informative.

I rarely recommend Tartine for beginners. Chad's high hydration doughs can be really unforgiving for some and will quickly deter the less... determined. That being said, if you find yourself enjoying the pursuit, Chad Robertson is the king of artisan bread in the States, and that book does have a lot to offer. I do love it.

Also, I generally suggest avoiding Peter Reinhart when it comes to learning sourdough.

absolutely. try this one

i use a variation of it that is an overnight bulk ferment, but the results are still good using the same day recipe. your results will vary depending on your pizza stone/steel, how your oven/broiler behaves, and of course a ton of other things, but it's a good place to start!

if you're really keen on going further, i HIGHLY recommend buying the book Flour Water Salt Yeast. its my bread and pizza bible.

Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forkish was my gateway bread book. Pretty straight forward technique/recipes - good stuff.
Also:
/r/breadit or/and /r/breaddit are amazing.

Good luck!

You're likely not kneading enough; that's how my breads used to turn out. Like what Protheanunicorn said, if there's not enough gluten development, you'll just have a fine crumb rather than delicious chewiness. If you're serious about bread baking, invest in a stand mixer that comes with a dough hook, to ease the strain on your hands.

A reliable trick I learned from Alton Brown to figure out if the dough is kneaded enough is to pull off a small piece of dough, hold it with the middle pinched between your thumb and index knuckle, and stretch it; you should be able to stretch it to the point where you can see light through it but it doesn't break. It should stretch pretty thinly, too. Here's a helpful video (at 3:30ish). You could also watch the full episode at the link for a lot of tips of the basics of bread making.

Also, find reliable recipes; easy recipes on generic websites tend to yield loaves of lesser quality. I can think of The Bread Bible, Cook's Illustrated, and King Arthur Flour's recipes.

Link to cookbook on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1579654355?pc_redir=1396133599&robot_redir=1

A quick Google search also found a blog post with the recipe:
http://the-cooking-of-joy.blogspot.com/2013/01/traditional-croissants.html?m=1

This is a very time consuming recipe - it took me an entire day to make these. The time and patience is totally worth it, especially if you love croissants!

Side note, I did not use European butter nor did I use the diastatic malt powder and they still came out great!

Hope you guys try it!

/u/buddyguything knows what’s up. My starter did this once and I started a new one simultaneously with only dark rye flour. I slowly blended the two together when the rye starter was about 7 days old because I didn’t want to loose that unique tang my original girl had. It worked far better than I had hoped and she bounced back like crazy. I now use a 50/50 mix of dark rye and unbleached white flour (just for taste preference) with dechlorinated water to feed my girl. I like the flavour the dark rye gives the loaves and because of its lower gluten content I find it’s much easier to mix up. Check out The Perfect Loaf. His method is what I used and he has a great section on how to start and maintain a wicked starter. Or better yet borrow or get yourself a copy of FWSY if you don’t have it already. Combining the methods those two bakers use has really upped my starter and sourdough game. Let us know how it worked out!

Jim Lahey's book my bread is fantastic. He uses the basic no-knead recipe but tweaks it in fantastic ways. He also goes into some different styles (ciabatta, baguette, foccacia, etc.) and some great go-withs (like homemade aioli for sandwiches). Highly recommended to advance from where you're at right now.

My family is going to have a really financially tight Christmas this year, and I want to make everyone bread and lots of goodies. Especially my cousins, they are going through more rough stuff than they should have to. Last Thanksgiving their mom (who I am not directly related to) sent them to their dad's house, for what was supposed to be the weekend, but told them not to come back because she didn't want them anymore. How messed up is that?? Anyway, their dad has 2 prior convictions on his record and is having a hard time finding work, so the extended family has helped a lot keeping the boys clothed and fed and all that good stuff.

So, even though my money is tight, I want to make the boys holidays as awesome as possible, and one of the ways I can think of to do that is bake. So I would really like The Baking Bible.

The two main books seem to be Tartine and Flour Water Salt Yeast. I have FWSY and think it's a great resource. I still will do other kinds of bread and don't only stick to this.

To get that nice crust you're looking at a dutch oven, just keep your eyes out for a sale on them. Beyond that a scale, a bowl, and an oven.

/u/p3n9uins's video is pretty nice shows everything for free. :D

So this isn't exactly in line with what you're thinking... but by far my favorite use of my dutch oven has been making bread. Tartine Bread is a fantastic book that teaches how to make some of the best sourdough bread I've ever had and it very much hinges on using a dutch oven.

I'm not sure I would exactly call it a cookbook as it really only tells you how to make one thing... but that one thing is incredible.

I'll do that. Ultimately, I'd like to dedicate enough of my yard to cut my flour purchases in half. I currently use 5-7 pounds a week baking sandwich loaves, the occasional pizza, and the occasional loaf of of something nicer from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Thanks for sharing the story about your grandfather. My grandfather and great-grandfather were both well respected in their community for the quality of goods that from their farms. Although I'm only a backyard, suburban gardener, I can only hope to achieve the same one day.

I cannot claim to have made the "perfect" loaf, but I came pretty damn close a couple of times, using no-knead based recipes from this book.

The recipes in here work on the same principal as the Sullivan Street Bakery no-knead bread recipe that's floating around the internet, where you have a long rest and rise period do most of the work. This book is great b/c it has a lot of different recipes in there beyond the basic "master recipe" (Their recipe for a crusty white bread that is similar to a French Boule).

I assume when you're talking about a white loaf, you mean something akin to sandwhich bread. The one that came out closest to this was their Buttermilk white loaf recipe . I've made this twice, and it is probably some of the tastiest sandwhich bread ever to come out of my oven. Theres also a white bread recipe in there that uses shortening or butter, so its supposed to be more like a soft "wonder-bread" consistency, but I never tried it.

I would post the recipe for you to see, but you know ... I don't want to get sued or anything :)

I'm definitely no pro, but I make a few loaves every month (and use a ton of the dough I make for pizzas). I swear by This book. Everything I've made from it has been great, and it has good sections on basic techniques.

Otherwise, follow this no-knead recipe.It really doesn't get any easier than that, and the bread that comes out is fantastic.

Beautiful-looking. I can practically hear the crunch of the crust. Previous commentor said to read Chad Robertsons's Tartine book. It's very good.

• Look at Chris Kelly's video ~ an adaptation of Robertson's techniques that I've tried and like Kelly's easy and less time-consuming take on it. His calls it: Tartine for Dummies. It's not dumbed down at all, just a nice variation.
  
• Strong, the yeast in sourdough is ~ Yoda says.

Honestly, I think most foreign students will be all right; college campuses are their own unique environment, and in most major cities (which is where I'm sure you'd probably want to study), foreign students are pretty common so there'd be nothing to really worry about. I could see Arab students having some worries, but even then I think it would be a bit of a stretch in most parts of the country.

----
Favorite cookbooks:

• The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
  
• How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
  
• Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish
  
  Those are the three I use pretty regularly. I have a few more but I use them for specific dishes or as reference for flavors (Ratio being a fine example of this).
  
  Favorite dishes (I'm restricting this to ones I can cook myself):
  
  
• Spinach ricotta gnocchi with pesto
  
• Tomato-sauce poached cod with roasted green beans
  
• Pulled pork shoulder
  
• Roasted chicken with rice and toum
  
• Acorn squash soup
  
• Arancini
  
• Shepherd's Pie
  
• Mussels with garlic and white wine

I first learned to make traditional bread that required kneading, but I don't bother with that anymore. Now I just follow Jim Lahey's no-knead method of using extra hydration and lots of time. That's the most significant technique recommendation that comes to mind.

Here's the basic workflow:

1. Mix flour, salt, yeast, and water in a bowl and cover it; let it sit for ~14 hours.
   
2. Shape it, cover it, and let it rise/"proof" for ~2 hours.
   
3. Preheat an empty Dutch oven inside an oven at around 450F.
   
4. Once the Dutch oven is piping hot, drop the bread dough inside and put the lid on to trap the moisture. Put the Dutch oven back in the oven and bake the loaf for ~40 minutes.
   
5. Take the lid off and bake until the top is acceptably dark, and then pull the loaf out and let it cool.
   
   From what I can tell, a crispy crust comes from baking the loaf at a very high temperature with moisture, like when you drop the dough into the hot Dutch oven and close it. When I drop the temperature, the crust is usually softer. I also proof my loaf in the Dutch oven so I don't lose volume in transit and I get a taller loaf, and I just stick the Dutch oven in the cold oven and let them heat up together. I'm not sure what effect that has on the crust crispiness, though; I bake mine at ~375F because I want a softer crust.
   
   I'd recommend starting with 25% whole wheat flour. In my experience, anything beyond 25% yields a noticeably denser bread, which isn't bad, but it's worth starting lighter so you can learn the difference. At 50%, I'd recommend adding vital wheat gluten to add some volume, but that's personal preference.
   
   If you're looking for a basic recipe, try this:
   300g white flour
   100g whole wheat flour
   8g salt
   1g yeast
   300g lukewarm water
   
   Follow the numbered directions above and see how it goes. Also, if you don't have a Dutch oven, any oven-safe covered vessel will work. I've used regular steel pots before. In a pinch, a plain baking sheet will work.

Yep, and this makes it especially frustrating following American baking recipes. 1 cup of something like flour can compress and be 140g per cup, or be sifted and fluffy at 100g per cup. For something like a delicate cake, this can be a huge difference.

I'm not able to find a good answer as to why weight wasn't used as a measurement in the US. One answer seems be that in the early colonies people traded in smaller distances, and had clearly defined expectations of what a bushel or a pick of crops (or a cart full of oar, a bucket of coal, etc) weighed or was volumetrically. However in a less homogeneous Europe weight/mass measurements had more importance in cross border commerce. When you buy flour in the market by weight, you might as well measure it that way when you cook it too.

Then the first real cooking school in the US, Fannie Farmer, made her own standardized imperial volumetric measuring standards in order to be able to publish cook books. It was widely adopted, and there we are.

For bread, I'll always grab The Bread Baker's Apprentice where he gives recipies by mass, imperial volumetric and percentages. That way I can QUANTIFY ALL THE THINGS!

This is virtually identical to the boule recipe in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.... the only difference is the added sugar.

You don't need to be so finicky with the mixing. Dump everything in a bowl, stir til mostly combined then cover it with a towel and stuff it in the fridge overnight. You can use it immediately, but it's not quite as flavourful.

The book suggests cooking it on a pizza stone at 450 for 30min, with a 30min rest between when you do that folding of the hunk of dough thing and when you stick it in the oven (they call it a gluten cloak).

It's good bread. It's even better after the dough has sat in the fridge for a week (it'll last two). It also makes decent pizza dough.

And the brioche recipe in that book can be turned into AMAZING beignets.

Edit to add link.

I have found (so far) the answer to half of your question:

*"Second, wheat flour, if mixed with water and kneaded, becomes very elastic. The flour-and-water mixture in bread becomes stretchy like a balloon because of a protein in wheat known as gluten. Gluten gives bread dough the ability to capture the carbon dioxide produced by yeast in tiny flour balloons." From How Bread/Stuff Works

Also if you are deeply interested in this information there is a book called How Baking Works that I would suggest investigating

Best of luck.

Not at all, this book starts off very easy. It's this book!

Some recipes are fussy with temperatures and time for rising/proofing etc, but this book literally has you throw your water, salt, yeast, and flour into a big container, let it rest at room temp for 2 hours, and then refrigerate for up to like 2 weeks. When you want to make bread, you just cut off a chunk, shape it with a touch more flour, let it rest for 40 minutes, and bake. Super easy!

look really nice, and like you had a lot of fun!
Your door is a little too tall for your oven though.... If you're really interested in refining your design, check out the book called The Bread Builders. It's a tremendous book that really goes into detail on optimal oven construction.
(source: I've cooked in many wood ovens made in many different styles, and I've worked for a company that builds ovens off of a modified bread builders model)

Awesome! Sourdough is a tough thing that can be really fun. I'm a chef on the savory side of things--thiugh running the whole restaurant I so have to do my fair share of pastry stuff. I have in the last year or so gotten really in to homemade breads. Check out this book, if you like making bread it'll change your life!

Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza https://www.amazon.com/dp/160774273X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_JqVZBbZZ5XZDZ

If you are interested in more bread recipes, I recommend Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day or Bread Baker's Apprentice. These two are great for starting out with bread. They show many techniques, shaping, rolling, baking styles etc. Ive made croissants from 'Artisan' many times, each time more amazing than the last.

There's a really simple sourdough bread recipe. It's by no means the best, but it's really simple.


300 grams flour

200 grams water

100 grams sourdough starter

12 grams salt

Mix, then knead until it passes a windowpane test (look it up on youtube for a good description of this. In short: Take a small piece of the dough, and gently stretch it. The dough is done when it forms a windowpane that's translucent without tearing.)

Put the dough in a covered bowl in a warmish place, come back in 60-90 minutes and knead the dough for 30-60 seconds. A lot of recipe's say "deflate" the dough, but the idea shouldn't be to degas the dough but rather redistribute the yeast in the dough. Put it back in the bowl, covered, and back in the warmer area. After another 60-90 minutes take the dough out of the bowl and shape it. Let it proof for 90 minutes, then bake at 500 for 15 minutes, then another 25 at 425.

This is just about the simplest recipe I've used. At higher hydration you stop kneading and start with stretch and folds. If you're really interested in more on baking stop by /r/breadit, or check out Peter Reinhard's "Bread Baker's Apprentice" ( AMAZON) or Chad Robinson's "Tartine Bread" ( AMAZON)

I highly recommend Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice". He's really easy to read and the pictures are beautiful. He teaches about bakers percentages, 12 steps to baking artisan bread at home, and each recipe is in volume and weight. Also, check out The Fresh Loaf. It's a forum for bakers.

Source: I taught a bread class using this book and the students seemed to like it a lot. I also have owned a bakery for the last 3+ years, baking 5-6 nights per week.

Flour Water Salt Yeast, by Ken Forkish. Very popular on here and one of the best starter books on baking good bread at home. His overnight white and wheat doughs are very approachable and teach you a lot about the process. I dig them because of the usage of store bought yeast, it’s just easier and less hassle for me. I’ve tried the sourdough starter thing too many times!


Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza [A Cookbook] https://www.amazon.com/dp/160774273X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-QIRDbE23VF14

Since I have a sourdough starter, I'm always looking for bread recipes that use natural leavening instead of commercial yeast. I found this adaptation of Peter Reinhart's recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (if you like to make bread, and you don't have this book...get it) and decided to make them. Needless to say, they turned out amazing (nooks and crannies and all). I don't think I'll be buying them from the store anymore, it's the first time I've ever had homemade English muffins, and it's a world of difference.

If you don't have a sourdough starter, here's the original recipe. If you've never had homemade English muffins, I highly recommend them.

Edit: A note about the cooking temperature with these, the first batch I made, I went with the recommended medium heat, and it was a bit too high. I prefer to cook these on low heat, maybe 2-3, so the insides cook a bit more, because the middle of my first batch was not fully cooked, even after finishing them in the oven per the instructions. I'd rather just get them browned nice on the skillet, and then finish in the oven until the internal temperature is 190-200 F.

Years ago, I bought a used Breadman bread maker off Craigslist for $10. It's an old model, but I think it's fantastic. I just recently bought used from Amazon The Bread Machine Cookbook. Also fantastic.

Ohh, great contest! My Favorite Book! I'm having a hard time narrowing it down to one... I would have to go with "A Child Called It" by Dave Pelzer. It's the true story of the childhood that the author had to live through, a really heartbreaking first-person look at abuse. He went on to write two more books about his life, they're all amazing but had me crying the entire way through... He went on to do great things, in the later books, but had to overcome so much.

On a lighter note, I would love The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

The bread does not go in the pot. The pot goes on top of the bread. Baking bread in a container that constricts its expansion will ruin the crust and destroy the texture of the crumb. Only short breads (muffins, cakes, ect) and soft pullman loaves (no crumb or crust) get bakes in containers.

Looks like you got a DIY version of a cloche baking pot. The cloche simulates a stone oven cooking the bread with infra-red heat (radiation). Whereas a standard home oven cooks using only hot air (conduction).


To use your DIY cloche, you need a baking stone or terra-cotta tiles. Preheat the baking stone and pot to 500F. When they are good and hot, place your bread dough (shaped into a boule) on the stone and cover it with the pot. Bake as per recipe.


Since you are just starting out I am going to recommend against using this technique, because judging the oven temperature and transferring the dough into the hot baking stones can be a bit tricky.


Instead you should buy a cast iron dutch oven and use Jim Lahey's No Knead technique. His method is practically foolproof and produces great bread with less than 20 minutes of time invested per loaf.


The cloche will give you better results for a wider range of dough formulas provided you take the time to learn about bread. I would recommend you read The Bread Bakers Apprentice if you are interested in going this route.

Baking is a learning process. I’ve selected a list of a good references:


Getting started

https://www.instructables.com/class/Bread-Class/

My favorite books


https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Bread-Lessons-Master-Baker/dp/031620062X

https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/0811870413/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=D3W0A522YN0Z49Y37CR2

https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2/132-2200314-5814741?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=160774273X&pd_rd_r=d2b81337-6b5d-11e9-9f49-5707d913d0fd&pd_rd_w=aXXDJ&pd_rd_wg=GprXQ&pf_rd_p=a2006322-0bc0-4db9-a08e-d168c18ce6f0&pf_rd_r=AKFEA35FM58RZV98V93X&psc=1&refRID=AKFEA35FM58RZV98V93X


Good and reliable websites


https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/

https://www.theperfectloaf.com/

Enjoy!

Thanks for the heads up! Yeah it looks like there are some gems in there for sale. Can anyone vouch for this book? I want a great bread making reference.

As some people mentioned, the sourdough that Pollan makes in the show is pretty difficult (in my opinion). I would suggest trying some store bought yeast bread first so you get a sense of the different steps and processes required to make bread. Once you have that down, you can start growing your sourdough starter.

Nonetheless, if you want to go ahead and start with sourdough, as people said, its not really as straight forward as just putting water in flour. You'll need a scale and be sure to weight out all your bread making ingredients, including what you're feeding the starter. Different bakers have different opinions on the ratio of flour to water, what type of flour, what temperature the water is, etc. Changes in these parameters will also change the taste of your sourdough (or even if it grows or not!).

What helped me the most actually was buying a book and reading through it. I think information on the internet is a little too scattered and tend to contradict one another, and it never turns out very well when I mix and match ideas from different websites. I recommend what a lot of people on this subreddit read: Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish.

Another good resource is the King Arthur site.

Once again though, I think it helped me a lot to make a lot of store-bought yeast bread first before trying sourdough. I've found making sourdough extremely fickle and prone to failure, and I can't imagine trying it without having had some experience making my earlier loaves. You're experience might be different than mine though! Good luck!

I used the recipe in the Bouchon Bakery cookbook by Thomas Keller - best of luck, happy baking!!

Bouchon Bakery

> bread is a really tedious process that would take a couple of hours (at least) to do it right.

Nope. 10 minutes the day before, 5 minutes the day of. And 5 minutes the next day for the other half of the dough. The mixing bowl half-full of dough in the fridge will add credibility as well - "I cook all day - when I get home I like to do things quickly in the kitchen."

Bread geeks will look down their nose a bit, but it makes a very competent crusty loaf. I particularly like the peasant bread. And the pizza dough comes out almost exactly like good cheap NYC pizza.

I think OP's lack of knife skills are going to be his undoing, though. Can't cram for knife skills.

Heh, Artisan Bread Steve! Best old bread making dude in the business. /u/icyblack introduced me to that recipe! I make that no-knead bread all the time. I also make the Serious Eats pizza dough. I've made both over 20 times each.

Not to get too technical about it, but they are different recipes. The hydration is different and the pizza dough uses oil.

Pizza dough requires more time for gluten production and TBH, flavor production.

If you use the bread process (which is SUPER short for any risen dough) you will get dough that will not be spreadable to fill the pan, it will lack gluten production. It will also lack flavor. The pizza dough needs at least 8 hours. I think the 24 hour dough is even better.

TLDR: No, you can't. You need the 8-24 hours for pizza dough. Sorry.

Also, someone else mentioned /r/Breadit which is an excellent resource.

If you want a real technical explanation of gluten production and baker's percentages, read Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast.

I run our parish's annual yard sale. The things I can guarantee will be there every year are bread machines and exercise machines (we no longer accept piano's because disposing of those after the sale is too expensive). Obviously there must be people who use them, because they are still being made, but if your wife has a stand mixer, I suspect your gift would be ay my next yard sale. If you want to honor her for baking bread, perhaps The Bread Bible would be a better choice.

Try some of the recipes on the left sidebar here: http://www.breadtopia.com/ As already suggested, the ATK (cooks illustrated) one is great.
I also got a lot of great recipes to try from the book that I checked out from the library: http://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

and I just use regular gold medal or king arthur unbleached flour.

If you are serious about making dough, and want to put a lot of time and effort into it then I suggest using this recipe post as a starter. Jeff Varasano has put more time into learning and documenting good pizza dough then any other person I know / read. You can keep it strictly DOP or branch out to your own liking after getting the basics right. Not all DOP (in fact very few that I know of) use a natural yeast or sourdough starter. they make a biga with regular bakers yeast. Jeff uses (or at least before he opened a restaurant) a natural starter. I do too. its more work but I like the subtle sour notes that I just don't get from a biga.

You can get a Italian culture here

You'll probably find yourself wanting more precise bread baking knowledge after a while. at least I did, and found experimenting with all kinds of bread doughs helped me tweak my pizza doughs in the right direction. I would recommend this book to get some the basics of bread making.

The best pizza recipe I've had has come from this book.

Bread Bakers Apprentice

That book in general has great recipes. The bagel recipe and the pizza recipe typically impress people.

Read the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes. Super easy and really good bread. You can probably google the base recipe and it gets better as the dough sits in your fridge. Makes a bunch of dough at once. Want some bread tonight? Cut a piece off, let it sit on counter, and throw in oven.

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

Sample recipe

I wouldn't trust Paul Hollywood on bread as far as I could throw him. Check theperfectloaf.com for some thorough recipes. Yes, it's sourdough, but will give you a whole bunch of information.

Thefreshloaf.com is another good source.

Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread book is also great.

If you are really interested in baking bread I would suggest getting the starting Bread book and the cast iron pan it recommends in it. The bread really isn't a ton of work, tastes great and is much better than anything you can make in a bread machine.

https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/0811870413

sorry, switched to laptop now so here's the page link without Pinterest

https://www.frugallivingnw.com/amazing-no-knead-bread-step-by-step-recipe/

Basic No-Knead Bread

Slightly adapted from Jim Lahey’s My Bread

Ingredients

6 cups bread flour (recommended) or all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1/2 t. instant or active-dry yeast
2 1/2 t. salt
2 2/3 c. cool water

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the water and stir until all the ingredients are well incorporated; the dough should be wet and sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest 12-18 hours on the counter at room temperature. When surface of the risen dough has darkened slightly, smells yeasty, and is dotted with bubbles, it is ready.
   
2. Lightly flour your hands and a work surface. Place dough on work surface and sprinkle with more flour. Fold the dough over on itself once or twice and, using floured fingers, tuck the dough underneath to form a rough ball.
   
3. Place a full sheet/large rectangle of parchment paper on a cotton towel and dust it with enough flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran to prevent the dough from sticking to the parchment paper as it rises; place dough seam side down on the parchment paper and dust with more flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran. Pull the corners of parchment paper around the loaf, wrapping it completely. Do the same with the towel. Let rise for about 2 hours, until it has doubled in size.
   
4. After about 1 1/2 hours, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot, such as a cast-iron Dutch oven, in the oven as it heats. When the dough has fully risen, carefully remove pot from oven. Unwrap the towel and parchment paper from around the dough and slide your hand under the bottom of the dough ball; flip the dough over into pot, seam side up. Pull the parchment paper off, scraping any stuck dough into the pan. Shake pan once or twice if dough looks unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.
   
5. Cover and bake for 40 minutes. Uncover and continue baking for 10-15 more minutes, until the crust is a deep chestnut brown. The internal temperature of the bread should be around 200 degrees. You can check this with a meat thermometer, if desired.
   
6. Remove the bread from the pot and let it cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

I learned using The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. I found it useful in several ways. It has a great section on what materials and tools you'll need and will use, what the quality of your ingredients will need to be in order for the end product to be a certain way and so forth. Also, each recipe has great instructions, and a bit of the history of the recipe. Overall, a great book for the beginning Artisan Bread Baker.

I've also heard that Rose Beranbaum's The Bread Bible is a great resource, but haven't had time to look into it myself.

Check out Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Bakers Apprentice" for the science and an in depth breakdown.

Check here for a shorter version.

Suffice to say that longer, cold fermentation favours the types of bacteria that break down starches and create more complex flavours (nutty, toasty to me). When you're only using three ingredients in a bread, it is your job to illicit as much flavour from those as possible.

Typical bread yeast is engineered to be fast acting, produce tons of carbon dioxide very quickly, and tends to not spit out much in the way of flavours. Hence the need for other ingredients like milk, butter, eggs, sugars, dough conditioners, etc. Great for a tangzhong milk bread, challah, or similar fluffy american white sandwich bread, but not so much for a complexly flavoured sourdough.

Both have their place in a bakers arsenal of flavour control.

Edit: A longer countertop rise would lead the bacteria & yeast to chew through all the available starches too quickly, resulting in a flatter loaf with a more liquid consistency before baking. This is really good if you're making focaccia or cibatta breads but your salt content needs to be much higher to offset and slow the fermentation down.

Yeah that's pretty normal I think, a lot of recipes say to punch the dough down and then form it into a ball, then let it rise for a second time just before baking. I'm still somewhat of a novice, I just started using FSWY (http://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X) has been a very interesting read for me and would probably be good for you if you want a really in depth explanation. ^^^I ^^^can ^^^also ^^^share ^^^an ^^^ebook ^^^version ^^^if ^^^you ^^^can't ^^^afford ^^^it ^^^right ^^^now

Highly recommend the book Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. It's my favorite and I've gotten a ton of compliments on the breads :)

I love my bread machine. I don't even like to eat bread that I didn't make anymore (unless from a legit bakery).

This cookbook has been so fun to go through! And informative for the bread making newbies - The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook: A Master Baker's 300 Favorite Recipes for Perfect-Every-Time Bread-From Every Kind of Machine https://www.amazon.com/dp/155832156X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_fb0SCbS9Z29T2

Sorry, yes. I should have been more clear. Thank you.

Here is the Amazon link for those interested. It seems it's currently 45% off:

Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza https://www.amazon.com/dp/160774273X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_4AtYzbWA2Q3G2

I did the "Overnight White Bread" recipe in FWSY. /r/Breadit turned me on to the book, and its worth checking out if you're into longer ferment times. Several great recipes and lots of insight.

The general recipe is:

• 1000g white flour
  
• 780g warm (90-95 F) water
  
• 22g salt
  
• 0.8g instant dry yeast
  
  Bulk fermentation is 12 - 14 hrs, or until nearly tripled. (Fold 2-3 times in the first hour or two.)
  Divide in half, shape and proof (about 1hr.)
  Preheat oven with dutch ovens to 475F.
  When proofed, flip dough into hot dutch ovens and bake with lids on at 475F for 30 mins.
  Uncover and continue baking for an additional 15 - 30 mins to desired color.
  Turn out onto racks and let cool.
  
  Edit: formatting

Thanks very much!

I followed the Saturday White Bread in this book.

1000 grams of flour

780 grams of lukewarm water

4 grams of instant yeast

22 grams of sea salt.

Combine the water and flour loosely. Let sit for half an hour.
Then sprinkle the yeast and salt over it. Fold it gently three or four times.
Then let it rise for 5 hours, folding two more times during that time. Just make sure to not fold the last hour.
Then take the dough out. Divide and shape into two loaves. Throw those in proofing baskets. Let them proof for an hour and 15 minutes.
20 mins prior, preheat the oven to 475 with the dutch ovens in. Once its ready, place the loafs into a dutch oven each. Bake for 30 minutes lid on, then 20 minutes lid off. Done!

i've made a lot from http://smittenkitchen.com/recipes/#Bread

a good chunk of them come from peter reinhart's the bread baker's apprentice

the potato rosemary bread is pretty great.

salt is critical. Just as important as yeast.

buy and read this book.

baking is a science. You are like god creating a world for your yeast to live in... then you cook their entire world and eat it!

yea i was kidding about faygo. Beer is indeed the best combo for pizza. I prefer newcastle with a double cheese, red pepper, and sausage pizza.

I just bought this book http://www.amazon.com/Josey-Baker-Bread-Baking-Awesome/dp/1452113688 which seems pretty amazing for beginner bread bakers (I just received it yesterday so I haven't made anything yet) but it has great reviews. he calls that round loaf a hearth loaf.

I don't know of any "brands" of sourdough starter. It's ridiculously easy to make your own. Mix water and flour together and tend to it. Eventually you'll have a wild yeast colony you can maintain.

If your starter is sour, it means that the yeast are starving. You do not really want your starter to be super sour. That said, it's not the starter's sourness that determines the sourness of the bread. You need to allow your bread the time to ferment. This is where it's going to develop its dynamic and characteristic flavors.

If you're interested in sourdough baking at home, I would recommend reading Nancy Silverton's Breads from La Brea Bakery

Yes, I believe you should knead it more.

The main purpose of kneading a bread dough is to develop the gluten which works like a web to trap the gas bubbles that the yeast produce to give it a rise. If you don't knead enough, there will not be enough gluten to trap the gas bubbles and it won't rise properly. Make sure your dough passes the windowpane test (image) before you are done kneading. It is unlikely that you will over-knead a bread dough.

High protein content in your dough is very important for making bread. If you are able to determine that, you should be able to figure out if you need to add any vital wheat gluten to your dough.

Also, you say you are using whole wheat flour. Whole wheat flour contains bran which is sharp and actually cuts the gluten, making it more difficult to make whole wheat bread than white bread. Peter Reinhart has a book that I would highly recommend if you are interested in making whole grain breads.

Good luck!

I started with Peter Reinhart books, namely Artisan Breads Every Day. They have great primers on mixing and kneading technique, and I'm still getting better at it. Try the Ciabatta for a really fluffy loaf. And I highly recommend Saf yeast, a digital scale, a dough whisk, and patience!

I suspect that it might be exposure to air as you open & close the jar.

I buy my yeast in a bulk package at Costco. The current one I have is a 454 gm (1 lb.) aluminium foil package of Fleishman's Active Dry Yeast and I've had it over a year or more now. I also store it in the fridge but use a bag clip to remove as much air as possible.

There's still at least a quarter of the bag left and it's still working very well. I used it the other day to make the sourdough rye sandwich bread from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. If anything, it was too active! :-)

I used to buy instant yeast in the small jars, stored in the fridge and I noticed the same issue you are having. I frequently threw out jars that were still half-full, which pissed me off. So I was somewhat apprehensive when I bought my first 454 g bag of yeast from Costco (I'm on at least my third one now). But keeping it away from air as much as feasibly possible works a treat for me. Since the bag is aluminium foil, the yeast is also shielded from light.

If I were you, I'd think about emptying the next jar you buy into a ZipLoc bag and squeezing out as much air as possible, wrap the bag in aluminium foil or put it in an empty coffee can with a lid then storing it in the fridge.

The sourdough rye bread is a winner, BTW.

There are lots of books out there I was not sure about buying a book, I mean I wanted the Tartine Book from Chad Robertson but then I saw the reviews and that make more difficult to choose “the right book”.

I’ve been baking for almost 2 years and half, I actually have a small [bakery] (https://www.facebook.com/Passiflory) with my girlfriend and since in my country it’s not common to see sourdough breads I want to add old techniques to my loafs. I need to improve working with starters and include this in all my breads.

After seen reviews and feedback of the books mentioned on this thread I pre-ordered [“Josey Baker Bread: Get Baking - Make Awesome Bread - Share the Loaves”] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1452113688/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Check out his [video] (http://vimeo.com/77071595)

Got myself the book "Flour Water Salt Yeast" the other day. Been making bread when time allows. In his book, Ken Forkish explains how he uses the Finger Dent method to determine when a dough is at its optimal proofing stage.

Check out the video and pick up his book. I highly recommend it.

Happy baking!

It's from this book. I just got a copy and have only made one recipe so far, but it turned out great. I'd recommend it.

> Okay, I think our disagreement, such as it is, is mainly semantic. My point is that talking about morality in terms other than human welfare doesn't make any sense, and that thus the only sensible way I can see to have a discussion about what people 'should' do is to discuss the effects of actions on human welfare.

Indeed, but I think you're making an unnecessary error that will bite you in the ass, when you subsequently use the language of morality. It's something I see all the time. Ok, fine, we've done away with god, but what if god is the universe? Or energy? That sort of thing.

It's really questionable and seems to serve only rhetorical purposes - Christians accuse atheists of having either no morality or of having one they refuse to acknowledge, and people scamper off to their corners to think about how we can refute that. Or my favorite, "god" now means the thing you value most, so your god is human welfare.

Admit it, you're not really an atheist.

If you mean this is a good way to live to ensure welfare, then you're talking about the same thing the city planner is talking about, not the priest. It unnecessarily lends credence to their entire enterprise when you adopt their vocabulary.

If human welfare is something you value and you think there's a way to live life so that you can contribute to it... what needs to be more complicated than that? Why dip your toe even once in a well full of ghosts? Because it too purports to give you rules for getting what you want out of life? So does this, but nobody would call that a moral code. It's just a way to get what you want.

(As an aside, I haven't read it, but I'm assuming it at least tries to tell you how to get laid. If not, substitute this, which tells you how to get good bread. Is there now a morality of bread-baking because using one yeast over another gives you that better thump you want?)

> What do you mean by "better off"? Can something that doesn't exist be better off or worse off than something that does exist? Is it some hedonic calculus that concludes that lives with a sufficiently bad suffering to pleasure ratio were not worth living?

Indeed. If a person reports to me that he'd have preferred not living, that's enough for me. I'm quite certain that if a person's fear of death were switched off and they were given some time in which to contemplate never having existed, most would prefer this.

If we struggle with the idea of comparisons with something that never existed, then let them be snuffed out in the wombs. Certainly a fetus/baby has a measurable welfare - I'm saying most would choose not to go beyond that stage if they weren't terrified into existence by their evolutionary heritage.

It is pretty much how flamingbabyjesus said. It is more of a process than a recipe. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/ this is a very good resource. I have Flour Water Salt Yeast wich explains all the steps, and ive heard that Tartine is also a very good book.
p.s A skale is very importaint.

What is missing with the bread you are making? What makes it not 'sourdough'? Taste? texture? etc? Do you have any pictures that we could work from?

What's your starter feeding schedule? How long do you feed it before you make bread with it. You shouldn't make bread immediately after feeding it, I have found about a day after feeding it is a good time. Also, how old is your starter, older starters have better flavor (no real hard line, I have a 25+year old starter that always delivers)

How long do you let it proof? Good sourdough needs to proof 8+ hours, Going faster and using instant yeast with the starter will make it a more mild flavor.

I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

The levain section covers everything about working with starters.

I never tried baking bread before I bought Flour Water Salt Yeast and now I've managed to make some pretty delicious loaves. If you take your time and read the technique sections, you'll start to get a good understanding of bread baking.

I'm about to check out this: Flour Water Salt Yeast

I'm hoping it will be like the Jim Lahey, Sullivan St Bakery recipe which I've made many times. It's time consuming but is the best bread recipe, hands down!

My boyfriend is the baker of the house, and his favorite baking books are all by Peter Reinhart -- this is the book he uses every week to make our house bread. But basically everything from this book is delicious.

Reinharts uses weight in his measurements too. :)

I have helped my Dad build his! We used instructions from a book called The Bread Builders. The oven that we made was really big. Like the size of a small shed. And we had to dig footers, lay cinder block(we actually had to employ the help of our mason neighbor) and all that jazz. We ended up using about 2 tons of cement by the end of it. Here is a link for the few work in progress picture I have. However, in the end it turned out supper nice! We both like using it a lot. I does take some practice to be able to fire it right, but when you do, the results are so much better than a conventional oven. It also slow cooks meat really well!

Add 1 Tbs vital wheat gluten per cup of flour, esp. if you are using whole wheat. Let the dough rise longer. Check your oven temperature with a thermometer. Bread needs high temperatures because it's primarily the steam which expands the dough, explaining why bread expands so rapidly in the oven but so slowly on the counter.

If you really want to learn bread, The Bread Bible is a great read.

http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bible-Rose-Levy-Beranbaum/dp/0393057941

I have made bagels of all sorts and I can tell you that the absolute best I've ever made are found in Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible. This of course assumes that you like chewy bagels and not the fluffy things that get sold in stores. I hope you have a good mixer, because the dough is hardcore!

P.S. The recipe calls for some ground black pepper. I know you are going to look at that and think "WTF? I'll just skip that". Don't. It is not for a super powerful taste of pepper but gives an interesting flavor.

A perfect excuse to break out my newest cook book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I tried out one recipe from it that had been copied online, and it came out great, so I'm looking forward to trying some others!

Yeah! It's from Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. Great book, highly recommend. http://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

I usually make classic pizza with homemade dough and olive oil rather than sauce. Top with tomato and mozzarella cheese and some oregano. According to a book I have on baking bread, it's the classic italian way to do it. It tastes amazing. The book refers to it as pizza margherita but it isn't anything like what you get from stores.

edit: For anyone curious, this is the book. Amazing book, can't recommend it enough. Just be sure you have a stand mixer and dough hook or your life is going to get difficult.

So the bible is at best 2% commandment (assuming we're including Leviticus, which nobody follows anymore, but i digress). Let's use The Bread Bible for contrast, as I'm most familiar with that compared to any other "bible" instruction manual. The Bread Bible teaches you everything you need to know about baking bread, and is mostly instructional (read commandment).

Now what I'm assuming happened is that somewhere along the line, some book publisher/marketer thought it a good idea to call something "the ____ bible" because it sounded catchy to them, and they felt the bible was some sort of guide book to life. Having been surrounded by christians my whole life, I can say there are quite a few people who consider the real bible to be such a guide book, but the text was never intended to be read this way. Granted, someparts are guidebooks (e.g. the commandments, the beattidues, parables, etc), but the lion's share of the book isn't. It's a collection of letters, poems and stories.

/rant

Portland has some unbelievable pizza, My two favorites are Ken's Artisan Pizza (304 SE 28th Ave) and Apizza Scholls (4741 SE Hawthorne Blvd).

Take a look at the pizza map in the sidebar for more locations -- but as far as I'm concerned, these are the best.

Ken Forkish is a dough legend and the author of Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza.

I'm an avid baker of all things sweet and have even made some quick breads and pizza dough, but artisan breads and the like are all new to me. Bought a couple of bread cookbooks from Amazon last week, and I made these bagels and a batch of pain au chocolat this weekend. I'm super stoked about how they both turned out!

I used the bagel recipe in this book.

Is that the Tartine bakery of the Tartine Bread cookbooks? If so -- super cool!

I'm also there with the monkey boots and Indy boot. Monkey boots just seem like high tops to me a lot of the time.

Occasionally I'll make oatmeal bread (which is delicious and easy) from the More with Less cookbook, but I get most of my recipes from the bread bible. It has a lot of great recipes and general information on how to bake. You may be able to find it at your local library, and if it's not there then they should be able to get it from another library.

Modified Ken Forkish's pure sourdough recipe from his book Flour Water Salt Yeast taking inspiration for quantities from this recipe and this recipe. Needs more and smaller choc chips but otherwise I deem this experiment a winner winner chicken dinner!!