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!

Sure thing. I've been through a bunch of gluten free flour blends already. I like King Arthur and Red Bob's Mill GF AP flour the best so far. If you want different types of GF flours (rice flours, starches, etc) Red Bob's Mill is the place to go. They have everything. Most grocery stores will carry at least some of the line. I've also ordered from Amazon. I keep all my flours (I bake a LOT and stock way more flours than normal) in sterile bins to keep the bugs out. If you get flour beetles or anything like that, you have to purge with fire and depending on your level of interest, specialty flours can get a bit spendy.

Xanthum gum is the glue that holds GF everything together. You don't need much but it is pretty magical stuff. Early on I was like "1/8th of teaspoon won't make a difference". LIES. It makes a huge difference. I *believe* the King Arthur GF AP flour may already have xanthum gum in it but if you are using other flours or experimenting with converting recipes, this is an important addition to your baking.

I pull a lot of recipes (both gluten free and not) from King Arthur Flour. They have been massively expanding their gluten free recipes and they test bake EVERYTHING. I have never had one of their recipes go really south. They have lots of good advice and will help you troubleshoot as well.

If you are a big bread fan but "don't have time", this book is for you. I own both GF and original and use them all the time. They developed a method so you could make the dough/rise when you have time and then throw it in the fridge. When you want bread, you pull it out, shape, and bake. I use mine for pita a lot.

America's Test Kitchen also has a fabulous resource. It is filled with recipes but also the "basics" of gluten free baking, how it works, and what you can and can't substitute. Even if you don't use the recipes (which you probably will), I think it is a pretty valuable resource.

Finally, I troubleshot GF, vegan pasta dough. We made ravioli with it but if you are into pasta, you could probably do whatever with it. I'm pretty proud of it so I'm sharing:

250 grams Brown Rice Flour

100 g Potato or tapioca starch

1 TBSP flaxseed Meal

1 tsp xanthum gum

1 tsp salt

3/4 c warm water

2 TBSP olive oil

Mix dry ingredients in standmixer, add water slowly to form cohesive dough. Rest for 30 mins in plastic wrap at room temp. Roll, fill, whatever your final shape is. Cook for 6 min in boiling, salted water.

​

Best of luck!

The pressure is on to get the recipe down! Okay, here it is.

Adapted from Paul Hollywood's recipe in this book.

Ingredients:

• 500g strong white bread flour
  
• 10g salt (I know it seems a lot, but it tastes so good)
  
• 10g fast-action yeast
  
• 170ml tepid milk - Paul suggests full fat, but I used semi-skimmed. I can't imagine it makes much difference, but I think that using 1% or skimmed probably wouldn't work.
  
• 4 medium eggs
  
• 250g butter - I used 130g 'slightly salted' butter and 120g of 'baking' margarine, such as Stork (not sure of any American brands) - note that if you use the margarine, the mixture will be very sticky and will take longer to rise, which ultimately makes for a tasty loaf but is more work and takes a lot longer. If you just use 250g butter and no margarine, the mixture should theoretically not be as wet.
  
  Filling:
  
• 1.5-2 tbspn red pesto, or similar - I think that that red pepper and tomato stir-through pasta sauce would also be tasty
  
• 1 ball mozzarella
  
• basil leaves
  
• butternut squash
  
• spices - I used black pepper, chilli flakes and cumin
  
• grated Parmesan/similar hard cheese
  
  Method:
  (Keep in mind that I use a food mixer for this. You probably could do it by hand, but it would take a long long time due to the dough being so sticky. I used a kitchenaid with the dough hook on and it still took a long time.)
  
  
• Put the flour in the mixing bowl, with the yeast on one side and the salt on the other - if the two touch, the salt will slow or even stop the yeast from working properly. Add the milk and the eggs, and mix on a slow speed until well combined.
  
• Cut the butter into small cubes, and add to the mixture very gradually. It's best if the butter is room temp for this. At this point, Paul suggests to mix for a further 5 minutes in a mixer; I mixed it probably for another 15 minutes because the dough was very sticky and wet. If the dough does seem too sticky to handle, just keep mixing it and mixing it - I'll admit, the dough for this seemed impossible before it proved. When I set it to prove, it was probably the consistency of a heavy cake batter, except that the gluten strands were very obvious from all the mixing/kneading - you need to watch out for the gluten forming (when it begins to look stringy) because that's what gives the bread its texture.
  
• Tip the dough into an oiled bowl, and cover with a tea towel or loosely with cling film. Leave to rise until it's at least doubled in size. Because my dough was quite wet, and my house is generally pretty cold, I actually went out for the evening and left it for about 8 hours, but Paul reckons it could be as quick as an hour and a half. It depends on your dough and how warm your house is. Personally, I think a slow, cool rise makes for a better bread.
  
  During this time, you might want to roast your butternut squash - I just peeled it, cut it into cubes and put it in a hot oven (around 200c) with olive oil, cracked black pepper, ground cumin and chili flakes, but you could probably use whatever you wanted. Roast until the edges are browning and the squash is soft and falling to pieces. If you wanted to boil or slow cook the squash, you could do that too. Should probably point out that you won't want to use the whole butternut squash - just sprinkle some cubes on to taste. I've made the leftover ones into a soup :)
  
  
• Flour a surface, and tip the risen dough onto it. Without knocking it back, roll it into a rectangle, about 1-1.5cm thick. Keep the long side of the rectangle facing you.
  
• Now it's the fun bit! Start by spreading the pesto over the rectangle of dough, leaving a 1-1.5cm margin at the edges. Then dot your mozzarella, basil and roasted squash over the dough, being quite generous. I tore the mozzarella into quite big pieces, so you get delicious oozy bits in the bread.
  
• Roll the dough into a long sausage, starting with the edge furthest away and rolling it towards you. Try to get it nice and tight if you can and try to avoid any tears. I needed to use quite a lot of flour for this, as the dough was still sticky - it still turned out okay. Make sure your hands are well floured when you roll it up
  
• Cut the roll in half, lengthways, so you have two long bits of dough - you should be able to see the layers of your filling in the two pieces.
  
• Twist these two lengths together, as if it were a piece of rope - it's good to not be too neat about it so the filling kind of begins to spill out over the dough, like in my picture. Then make the length into a circle and press the edges together. This is why it's called a couronne - it means crown, and the shape at the end should look like a twisty crown.
  
  Note: the pictures from the book showing you how to do it are here: 1 2 - Paul used parma ham, mozzarella and basil instead.
  
  
• Place the couronne on a lined baking tray, and cover loosely with a plastic bag. Leave to prove again. Again, I went for a long, slow prove with this, and left it in the fridge overnight, so probably around 9 hours. I then left it out of the fridge for a further hour or so, still covered with the plastic bag. However, go with your gut - if it's doubled in size after 2 hours, you probably don't wanna wait much longer! Don't worry too much if it doesn't look like it's risen loads - mine didn't look loads bigger but then grew massively in the oven!
  
• Brush the loaf with an egg wash, and scatter with grated parmesan and black pepper, to taste. Pop in a preheated oven at 200c for around 25 minutes, until golden brown and smelling deeeeelicious.
  
  You don't have to use the filling that I used - in his recipe, Paul used parma ham, mozzarella and basil, and I've also seen a sweet version made with apricots. I also think it would be amazing with ricotta, honey and walnuts, or brie and grapes (although they might be too wet), or blue cheese...etc. Be creative!
  
  Hope this is all clear. I tend to meander away from recipes a bit when I bake so it might not be exactly the same, but go, experiment, have fun...that's what baking is all about, no?
  
  Thanks for all the food-love :)

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!

I would suggest doing some reading on the science of baking. I don't know if Panera taught you guys any of that, but it is SO helpful to know in my own baking, and just knowing a few small facts can show that you're really knowledgeable.

Some good options, if you have access to a library or want to spend the money on amazon - How Baking Works, King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion and The Pastry Chef's Companion are all good bets. Beware, though - The Pastry Chef's Companion is super involved and interesting but the science of baking stuff isn't very prevalent. It's there, but not as much as in the first two books.

Best of luck! Be honest with the interviewers and it will go great. Keep us updated on how it goes!

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!

I've made many yellow / vanilla cakes over the years, including a couple of multi-tier wedding cakes for GF brides. I'm a guy, and bake very seldomly, but I was determined to give my wife (who has celiacs) a proper birthday cake, so I learned how.

By far the best thing I've found is:

1. This Book - use the recipes, and specifically, the flour mix they recommend in here.
   
2. It comes down to the quality of your rice flour. I highly recommend this particular superfine flour in addition to potato and tapioca starch (the latter two you can get super cheap at Asian markets, but don't skimp on the rice flour)
   
   Edit: Also, never, ever buy frosting. Make your own. Fresh frosting plus the vanilla cake recipe from the book I linked will be the best cake you've ever had, gluten free or not.

American Pie is the best, hands down. Reinhart explores the history and development of awesome pizza. He's passionate, and a great teacher.

Pizza on the Grill by Karmel and Blumer explores a different, relatively new American pizza tradition, grilled pizza. There are a few different strategies for grilling pizza, and this book isn't comprehensive, but the authors have developed an approach that's pretty outstanding.

Pizza by James McNair is noteworthy. McNair's series of cookbooks are all small, slim trade paperbacks with great pictures for each recipe.

I've heard good things about Jim Lahey's new My Pizza, but I haven't read it yet. Lahey is the no-knead bread guy, and has adapted this to pizza dough.

I'm no pro but I've been baking for a long time at home.
These are the things you need:

• All purpose flour (non-bleached). King Arthur will serve you well.
  
• Yeast
  
• Salt
  
• Water
  
• Bowl (a big plastic one will work, like tupperware or something)
  
• Something on which to bake the bread. A baking stone if you're going to free-form it or a bread pan if you want it a particular shape.
  
  That's more or less it.
  I recommend this book by Bernard Clayton, it's amazing and produces really good breads. And he does a good job of walking you through bread by bread. It's an "oldy but goody". There are other books out there that are popular but if you've never baked before I'd recommend that one.

Agree with the earlier comment of kneading for longer. I've found that I need to knead for anything between 5-15 min if doing it by hand.

While kneading, you're "stretching" out the gluten and it is normal for the dough to "rip" as you put it depending on the flour type. But the fact that your knead is getting tighter (as you mention) indicates that you're doing the right thing as you're on your way to build up an elastic gluten structure. However with low-to-medium gluten content flour (such as rye and spelt) you won't get the same silky-thin elasticity as you get with white flour.

This image shows on the left a wholemeal dough and, on right, rye dough. Maybe it can give you an idea of how different the dough can stretch when using different flour types (spelt should be somewhere between these two).

I've found that using 100% spelt/rye yields a rather heavy brick-like bread and personally I find that mixing 50/50 or 75/25 with (very) strong white flour yields bread and consistency that I like better myself :)

Regarding kneading techniques, I've found it helpful to knead in a push-away-from-you, then bring it back and turn 90 degrees and repeat. Something similar to this if it makes sense.

These images are both from the River Cottage Handbook No. 3: Bread. Pretty good book to get you started and teaches you a few basic techniques (just don't trust their Brioche recipe, it is the devil!)

Tip: You can over-knead, at a certain point the gluten structure collapses and the dough goes from firm to soggy/sticky again. You can't recover from this and the batch needs to be binned. This however is unlikely to happen when you hand knead (as your wrists will usually give up before).

I'm not really a gluten-free baker, but I've imitated sourdough flavor a few times using some apple cider vinegar and a tiny bit of autolysed yeast (EDIT: yeast extract). I'm not sure how you can really improve the texture of gluten-free bread, but this bread book and this one use a rather complicated mixture of different flours to give you the binding, rising, and protein properties of a wheat bread. I know the "5 minutes a day" method gives a bit more flavor to wheat breads by allowing the yeast to keep developing slowly in the fridge so maybe the gluten-free version will also taste better. And of course any fresh bread will taste better than store-bought, especially since gluten-free breads seem to go stale more quickly. Good luck!

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.

My standard whole wheat bread:

1 1/4 cups water

1/4 dry milk (I will often just use 1 1/4 cup of soymilk)

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 T agave (the recipe calls for 2 T brown sugar)

2 T coconut oil (it just calls for vegetable oil, but we only use coconut oil)

3 1/4 cups whole wheat flour (I replace about 3 T of this with vital wheat gluten)

1 1/4 t instant yeast

I end up using the Sweet Cycle, as for whatever reason, when we moved, it seemed like that worked better than the whole wheat.

Perhaps try going to your local library and looking for bread machine cookbooks? My MIL got me 300 best Bread Machine recipes and I've had a lot of luck with everything out of it.

For the no sugar themed week, I made maple cornbread. Rather than using traditional sugar, the recipe uses maple syrup for sweetness. I got no hint of the maple flavor, which was a bit disappointing. I’m not the type that needs or wants a sweet cornbread, but with the recipe specifically mentioning maple in the title, I expected there to be a noticeable maple flavor. It was a good cornbread, but it was just lacking the maple flavor I expected.

---

Maple Cornbread

Recipe from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion; also available online

Makes 9 servings

Ingredients

• 1 cup (4¼ ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
  
• 1 cup (4¾ ounces) yellow cornmeal
  
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
  
• ½ teaspoon salt
  
• 1 cup (8 ounces) milk, whole, skim or 2 percent
  
• ¼ cup (2¾ ounces) maple syrup
  
• 4 tablespoons (½ stick, 2 ounces) butter, melted
  
• 2 large eggs
  
  

  Directions
  

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly grease an 8 x 8-inch square or 9-inch round baking pan.
   
2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt until thoroughly combined. In a small bowl or a large measuring cup, whisk together the milk, maple syrup, melted butter, and eggs. Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until just moistened.
   
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake the cornbread for 20 to 25 minutes, until it’s lightly browned and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove it from the oven and serve it warm with butter and additional maple syrup, or with a main dish — red beans and rice would be nice.

This recipe comes from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads which I cannot recommend highly enough. The book has over 700 pages of recipes, tips, and tricks and EVERY bread recipe has instructions for making the doough by hand (below), by mixer, and by food processor!

He describes this as "A farmhouse loaf in New England kitchens for more than 150 years. When white flour was scarce, often in wartime, this blend of rolled oats, cornmeal and whole wheat was added to the flour to make it go farther. It makes a delicious loaf that tastes equally good in less troubled times."

Total Time: 4 hrs 30 mins
Prep Time: 3 hrs 30 mins
Cook Time: 1 hrs

WAR BREAD

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon shortening
1/3 cup molasses
1 tablespoon salt
3 cups boiling water
1 (1/4 ounce) package yeast
5 -6 cups all-purpose flour, approximately

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl combine the rolled oats, cornmeal, whole wheat flour, shortening, molasses and salt.
   
2. Pour in the boiling water, stirring constantly, until the mixture is smooth.
   
3. Set aside to cool to 120-130 degrees.
   
4. Sprinkle the yeast on the batter and blend.
   
5. Stir in the white flour, 1/2 cup at a time, first with the spoon and then by hand, or with the flat beater of a mixer.
   
6. The dough will be somewhat heavy and dense and will not have the elasticity of white dough. Nevertheless, the dough will eventually form a shaggy mass that cleans the side of the bowl. Sprinkle on flour to control stickiness as necessary.
   
7. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead with a rhytmic motion of push-turn-fold, for 8 minutes. the dough will become smooth. Sprinkle on more flour if the dough sticks to the work surface or your fingers.
   
8. place the dough in a bowl and pat with butter or greased fingers to keep the surface from crusting.
   
9. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and put aside for the dough to rise at room temp till twice its original size - about 1 hour (shorter if using rapid rise yeast).
   
10. Punch down the dough and knead for 30 seconds to press out bubbles.
    
11. Divide the dough into 2 or 3 pieces. shape into balls and let them rest on the work surface for 3-4 minutes.
    
12. Form into loaves and place into 9-inch (2 loaves) or 8-inch (3 loaves) loaf pans. Cover with wax paper and leave till the center of the dough has risen to an inch above the edge of the pans, about 50 minutes.
    
13. Preheat oven to 350 20 minutes before baking.
    
14. Bake the loaves in the oven till they are nicely browned and test done, about 1 hour (I check at about 45 minutes). Turn one loaf out of its pan and tap the bottom crust with your finger - a hard, hollow sound means it is done.
    
15. if the loaves brown too quickly, cover with brown sack paper or foil.
    
16. Midway through baking and again near the end, shift the pans so loaves are exposed equally exposed to the temperature variations in the oven.
    
17. remove bread from oven and turn out of pans. place on metal rack to cool.
    
    FIELD NOTES:
    
    NOTE1: It was a very hot, humid evening when I made this and I ended up using 7+ cups of bread flour. This dough will ALWAYS have a slightly sticky/tacky feel to it but try not to dust on more flour unless you are getting dough-monster-hands; I think mine would have had a lighter crumb if I had used less flour.
    
    NOTE2: I let the boiling water mixture sit for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, and yet I still get that slight crunchiness from the cornmeal. It does NOT negatively effect the bread (no more than the cornmeal dusting an English muffin or pizza would), but perhaps leave it sit for 1/2 hour or more to allow the cornmeal to hydrate.
    
    NOTE3: This was a nice loaf; chewy crust with a slightly dense, close crumb and just a hint of sweetness from the molasses. I think that next time I will make a pollenta from the cornmeal (and 3 cups water), and add that to the oats/wheat mixture in order to remove that slightly sandy crunch from the cornmeal.
    
    OTHER IMAGES

Hi Guys, thanks for all of your suggestions, they've been a real help in deciding what to go for!

For those who are interested, here's what I went for:

Baking Cloche

Dough Scraper

2 x Round Banneton

Baker's Linen Cloth

My Weigh KD8000 Kitchen Scale

Professional Lame/Grignette/Blade

Book: Brilliant Bread - James Morton

Once again thank you all :)

A great book to read is [Bread illustrated] (https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Illustrated-Step-Step-Bakery-Quality/dp/1940352606). It's pretty cheap and they explain everything from the equipment needed to the easy breads to the super turbo championship edition breads

I got this recipe book when I bought my machine which has some great recipes.

If I just want some bread to have on hand and really don't feel like baking I use this incredibly easy white bread recipe. And if I feel like spending an extra 5 minutes in the kitchen this applesauce loaf is my favorite recipe. It has a lot of flavor and still rises a lot unlike many breads with whole wheat. I skip out on the raisins though...

My go-to substitute for all-purpose flour is white whole wheat flour.

I know it's not going to give me the same result as AP flour, but I'm not trying to win any competitions here; I'm just trying to be healthier while still enjoying delicious food and white whole wheat flour does the trick for me.

Edit: A great whole grain cookbook is Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.

Cookbooks! I read so many food blogs, but it's never quite as nice as reading a cookbook, even if it's more practical.

Some I enjoyed this year:

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day - My bread-baking bible

Top with Cinnamon - This girl is 18 and is better at cooking/styling/photography/writing than I will ever be

Joy the Baker's Homemade Decadance - Basically the food blog queen

Sunday Suppers - This one is just beautiful

I like to bake them fresh loaves of bread. It's extremely cheap, everyone loves fresh bread, and then you also know how to bake bread.

That linked book's master recipe makes 4 loaves a batch and is idiot proof, no kneading or guesswork. They look exactly like the picture on the cover and are delicious. Feel free to pm me if you have any questions.

I lot of my advice has been mentioned already, but if you are interested in exploring high altitude baking in more depth, I highly recommend this book.

Pie in the Sky Successful Baking at High Altitudes: 100 Cakes, Pies, Cookies, Breads, and Pastries Home-tested for Baking at Sea Level, 3,000, 5,000, 7,000, and 10,000 feet (and Anywhere in Between). https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060522585/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_O.SgAbJZ272MB

My love for Gluten-Free Baking Classics burns hot like a thousand suns. Really, it helped me a lot. Plus collecting all new flours and starches and playing with them was lots of fun :)

The recipe is from Bonnie Ohara’s book Bread Baking for Beginners

Thank you so much!!! I would highly encourage you to try making it! 💗

Get yourself a book as /u/ETABLERT said. The River Cottage Handbook on bread its a good one.

Get a container, some flour from your preferred supplier, a big container and get going! Do some reading, there are plenty of on-line sources, plenty of good books out there.

Starting your own sour dough is as easy as mixing flour and water together.

That said, if you did want to buy a start then Bakerybits.co.uk sell one. I have used them several times, and found them to be really good. The site in general that is, not the starter.

Based on Pain Ordinaire Carême from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743287096

Activate 2 teas yeast in 1-1/4 cup warm water in a stand mixer. Add 2 cups flour and beat with flat beater at high speed until gluten develops (~10 minutes). You'll know. The batter will pull together around the beater. Add 1 teas salt dissolved in 1 teas warm water.

Switch to dough hook and add around 1-1/2 to 2 cups flour. You want a slightly wet dough. Turn out and let rise for an hour, until doubled.

Grate ~1 cup Parmesan cheese and mash two cloves of garlic. Combine with a fork.

Split the dough in half, two baguette. For each one, flatten to a rectangle and add cheese/garlic and fold over. Repeat flattening and folding a few times, but not too many or the mixture will be completely dispersed throughout. I like veins of cheese within the crumb. Let shaped baguettes rise for an hour.

Half hour before baking, place pizza stone in middle of oven and shallow metal pan on the bottom. Heat oven to 450F.

When ready to bake, plenty of slits on the tops of the loaves. Place loaves on stone and dump water in the shallow pan for a blast of steam. Close door quickly. After 5 minutes, add more water to pan. Maybe again after 15 minutes. Bakes in around 25 minutes. The usual: golden crust and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Remove and place on cooling rack. Wait 15 minutes so when cutting the crumb doesn't collapse.

Thanks!!

I used the recipe from The Breadbaker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.

Honestly, it's just worth it to buy the book - Reinhart is a BOSS...

fortunately, some saint already posted the recipe on reddit. lol

Happy baking!

My wife gave me the book, Beard on Bread. It is the Basic White Free-Form Loaf. You can also find the recipe here that someone else posted.

Didn't deviate much, other than using a hair more water in the sponge to make sure it was a very wet dough. As a result I probably used a bit more flour than it calls for when making the dough. I stopped measuring after 2 cups and probably kneaded in a bit more than a half cup.

It rose like crazy. The first rise is supposed to take 1.5-2 hours, pretty sure mine was done in an hour, tops. Which I was thrilled to see, since usually I never seem to even get it to rise to double bulk.

I got the recipe from Bread Baking for Beginners !

Normally I would share the recipe, but the author is a self-taught baker who runs a bakery in her home. I’ve learned so much from this book and I strongly recommend :)

I LOVE Bread Baking for Beginners. From a woman who runs Alchemy Bread in Modesto (if you do Instagram she has an awesome feed and will even respond to DM’s).

Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads https://www.amazon.com/dp/1641521198/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_IbIxCbWRR6KTA

I had never really baked bread before, I got this for Christmas and now I bake a loaf or two a week!

Bread Baking for Beginners by Bonnie O'Hara is a good one. The next step up from that one would probably be Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. Both of them have great recipes for beginners and walk through some of the science of things and why things work the way they do. Sometimes your local library will have a copy, which might be a good way to look at recipes before you buy the book.

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.

Paul Hollywood's 'Bread' might be a good choice - he co-hosts the Great British Bake Off (v popular show) in the UK: http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Hollywoods-Bread-Hollywood/dp/1408840693

100 Days of Real Food by Lisa Locke


I'm already working my way through my 300 Best Bread Machine Recipes by Donna Washburn & Heather Butt that was sent by my amazing reddit SS this year.

Pastrami recipe

Beer mustard recipe

Rye bread recipe contained herein

I would definitely make any/all of these again. Great recipes, stellar results.

This is a sandwich that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Nudge nudge, wink wink.

A classic show that is definately my favourite is: a bit of fry and Laurie. Rediculously witty and clever comedy. Here's a good sketch

[Here's a wishlist item:] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0091955602/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1HQ11RS7T644X&coliid=I20NMLMIQCS1QG)

Bread has always scared me cause it seemed vague (and sticky) but I've been giving it a shot the past few weeked, I think I just needed the right book. If you like me have a fear of bread might I suggest Bread for Beginners as a great intro. I'm still making the first no knead recipe but getting better (but my dough still takes forever to float)

If you want the simplest no-knead approach as a foundation for variations, I'd recommend Jim Lahey's My Bread. He's less up-tight about details than Ken Forkish, but the bread is just as great, and there is a lot more variety (e.g. carrot bread, olive bread, cheese bread, coconut-chocolate bread). But it's not a comprehensive recipe book.

If you want a more traditional book of recipes, I'd say check out Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice or Beranbaum's Bread Bible.

All the loaves I've baked out of Bien Cuit have been really, really good. Not your typical white sourdough loaf but really rich in flavor.

You need real help. James beard has a book called "beard on bread". http://www.amazon.com/Beard-On-Bread-James/dp/0679755047/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382906257&sr=8-1&keywords=beard+on+bread

I couldn't make out your paragraph. Sorry.

Good luck in the future. Read the book.

Thank you. The bread is from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes/day

Essentially you mix up a large batch of dough (water, yeast, salt, flour), let it rise at room temperature, then put the container in the fridge. When you want bread, you pull of a chunk, shape it, let it rise some more, then bake. The brilliance is that you put in some effort up front, but then the daily labor is literally 5 minutes, although the time between deciding you want bread, and the bread coming out of the oven is several hours. The actual work is just a few minutes and you feel like a pro, like you really got your life dialed in. No special tools, but a pizza peel really helps. The instructions cover about four pages in the book, but once you "get it", you just won't need them. And you don't need to knead the dough at all. The bread is really very very good bread. Amazon has the original version of the book from several used book sellers for under $8 including shipping. Worth every penny because it describes how to make modest adjustments to get substantially different types of bread (ciabatta, flat breads, pizza, peasant loaves, and heartier loaves with varied flours). I would bet the library has a copy, too, so free to borrow.

​

I realized I didn't say what the vinegar was for ... it's to make poor girl pickles - just salt, sugar, and vinegar plus whatever chunks of vegetables you have (cucumber, carrots, cabbage), in a jar, in the fridge. Not super exciting unless you add some spices, but you can do things like cut very fine shreds of cabbage or carrots and then do a quick soak in vinegar with sugar and salt, then use it as a small garnish on tacos or in a sandwich to really kick up the flavor for pennies and just a few minutes of effort.

I am fortunate to have a teenage son who will take long walks with me and humor me on meal planning. I've driven all over my state and it has soooo many tiny towns really far from anywhere, and often the only source of food is a convenience store, sometimes a Walgreen's. Prices are obviously a lot higher, but the question became, or the problem to solve became ... if this was your only source for groceries, what would you buy, in what order, and why, and then what do you cook, particularly if you really don't know how and are starting with the bare essentials. Even the worst small gas station stores almost always have limes and bananas, plus dry rice and beans, pasta and sauce, and eggs and cheese in the refrigerated section. Many have a few onions, tortillas, cilantro and jalapenos and maybe a few ratty tomatoes. So that became the beginning of the training/planning, especially since my older daughter says literally NO ONE she knows (except herself) in their 20s can cook, and they are miserable and broke and super stressed out about it. Just really struggling to pull their food together.

Unfortunately I do not have the recipe available right now as I was borrowing this book from a friend. I didn't have very high hopes because the first stretch and fold was essentially the consistency of pancake batter, but ended up good. Definitely my favorite bread so far, but a bit of a PITA to make.

Ahh well crudola I will find something else lol

FOR THOSE LIPS THAT MAY BECOME CHAPPED

How about a Cookbook Always nice to have baked goods when traveling or visiting family from afar.

There are a lot of great cookbooks out there, and I recommend getting several different ones that cover individual areas and ingredients. There is only one when it comes to baking, though: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. The Challah and blueberry lemon buckle recipes are worth the price alone.

If you put the stone really close to the broiler, and turn that sucker on after pre-heating the oven, you can pull it off in a home oven. Leave the broiler on while the pie is in to help cook the top.

This technique was developed by Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery and no-kneed bread fame. His book, My Pizza, is excellent and spells it all out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKI7ssgFvTI

Not sure about video series... But I bought this cookbook and found it to be very helpful. I had some experience but not much. This book has helped make bread making seem like something I can do! They have pictures for each step and talk about troubleshooting issues and even go into the science of bread at the beginning a bit. book on amazon

I love baking bread and to be honest some of the /r/breadit suggestions are spot on, even for British bakers.

The one I love the most is Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forkish. The measurements are all in metric, as most bread recipes are even stateside. I was initially a bit skeptical about no-knead but I'm a complete convert now.

If you want a specifically British book, and one that starts off with more basic recipes, try Brilliant Bread by James Morton. He was on GBBO a few years ago.

Ahhhh, my condolences, how tragic!

I'm something of a cookbook minimalist, and keep my personal collection pretty concise; I'm quick to give away books if they've been on my shelf too long without much use. I used to be a cookbook hoarder, but I don't have the space for it anymore, lol.

The cookbooks I have on the shelf rn are Season, The Palestinian Table, Arabesque, Afro-Vegan, Donabe, and several Japanese-language cookbooks.

For dessert-related things, I have Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft, Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique, SUQAR, and the Flavor Thesaurus.

I know you where asking for classes, but I have to recommend the river cottage bread book. Worth a look if you want to get into it.

Link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bread-River-Cottage-Handbook-No/dp/074759533X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414658706&sr=8-1&keywords=river+cottage+bread+book

Her Gluten Free Baking Classics book is amazing. Caveat emptor though, the ingredients you'll need to buy will cost you close to $100 but it's worth it.

Link for those wanting it.

Thanks for the heads up! First kindle recipe book. Should be interesting.

Do you have Kindle? These bread bibles are really cheap now check them out https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_13/143-2043283-2950319?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=tartine+bread&sprefix=tartine+bread%2Caps%2C292&crid=3DT15HULFL72B $3 bucks on the kindle? Fantastic! also look up Sullivan Street Bread https://www.amazon.com/Sullivan-Street-Bakery-Cookbook-ebook/dp/B06XH3N2R4/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1523773667&sr=8-2-fkmr1&keywords=jim+levy+bread and this guy is really doing a job in Brooklyn Bread Scene https://www.amazon.com/Bien-Cuit-Bread-Features-Exposed/dp/1941393411/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523774082&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=buin+cuit this guys bread is not to be believed http://www.biencuit.com/#smithst

It's very possible. My go-to dead-simple sandwich loaf, for example, is 100% sprouted whole wheat. I baked a loaf this morning and I assure you it's delicious :)

Loaves like the one here are harder with 100% whole, but very possible. Here's a book on the subject.

Jim Lahey, the guy who invented "no knead", has published pizza dough recipes in his first book ("my bread") and then published a whole cookbook just on pizza ("my pizza"). His dough is perfect for pizza. it needs a hot oven though, to get it to plump properly 500º is a minimum, and you can play with the broiler and an open door to get it even hotter.

His no knead dough is essentially the same between pizza and bread. He does suggest using a little bit of sugar to get the pizza dough to rise early in his bread book, but I have had good results with both.

https://www.amazon.com/My-Pizza-Easy-No-Knead-Spectacular/dp/0307886158

"Flour Water Salt Yeast" by Ken Forkish (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/160774273X/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_aJ1sybPYAT05H) gets consistently good reports here.

I'd also recommend "Dough" by Richard Bertinet (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1856267628/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_AH1sybKH7YCJG)

and Paul Hollywood's "Bread" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1408840693/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_-F1syb7TKQJWA)

This book gave me a great start

https://www.amazon.com/Beard-Bread-James/dp/0679755047/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466123896&sr=8-1&keywords=Beard+on+bread

Jim Lahey's slow-rise dough is absolutely amazing.

Baked on pizza stone with ample preheating at maximum oven temperature (500F/260C). After putting the pizza in the oven I left it the oven at "bake" setting for 6 minutes. Then I switched to "broil" (distance broil element to pizza about 4in/10cm), opened the oven door about 30s until the heating element switched on and broiled for another 3-5 minutes.

I like to use Bread Illustrated, he's got about every type you'd like.

The pie crust recipe in this book is amazing. Omit sugar for a savory recipe.

Gluten-Free Baking Classics:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572840994/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_24CTybTKSM3P3

FYI, same price for the kindle version right now as well.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F8H0FNW

Recipe from Saveur.com. I halved it, and tweaked it a bit for high altitude using some tips from Pie in the Sky (ie, slightly less sugar, slightly more flour, dividing the 1 hour rise into 45 minutes, punch/knead, then another 15 minutes, and cutting the second rise from 30 minutes to 20 minutes).

My first foray into the yeasty world. I was very nervous, but very pleased with the results!

Understanding the hydration of your doughs will open up a lot of the mystery behind bread baking. The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is a fantastic book to have on your shelf too.

It’s literally called “Gluten Free Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day: https://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes/dp/1250018315/ref=nodl_

Hugh Whittingshal has a plan for a brick oven in his River Cottage Bread book. It has the full plans and directions, though you had better have permanent space for it.
http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Cottage-Handbook-Daniel-Stevens/dp/074759533X/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Another good book is Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.

The CIA baking might be a good place to start. CIA Baking and Pastry

I really like the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion.

Start with a textbook, like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Baking-Pastry-Mastering-Art-Craft/dp/0470928654/

Of course, the primarily British products and British-named products won't be listed.

I am not sure of what you already have or what you would need, I am listing a few things on top of my head:

• Crock pot
  
• Cast iron skillet
  
• Dutch oven
  
• Victorinox chef knife
  
• Microplane zester
  
• Bread maker machine
  
• Mandoline
  
• Mortar and pestle
  
• Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza
  
• Tartine bread
  
• Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
  
• Espresso maker
  
• Cookie Sheet and cooling racks
  
• Meat Thermometer

I bought the Bread Revolution Book and did the basic loaf which turned out fabulous. A bit on the dense side, but that's to be expected.

For what it's worth, this is the textbook almost all of my pastry arts courses are using: https://www.amazon.com/Baking-Pastry-Mastering-Art-Craft/dp/0470928654/

"When baking, keep in mind that natural and Dutch-process cocoa powders are not always interchangeable -- blindly substituting one for the other can upset the delicate chemical balance in a recipe, spoiling results and flavor (you don’t want your chocolate cake to taste like it was made with soap). Sometimes one cocoa powder can be substituted for the other in recipes. According to “The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion”: "

I was accused of greasing my chocolate cakes with soap as a young baker...never knew why till I became a baker...

I also prefer Google Play Books, but it's been the same price Kindle for awhile now.

This is my go to recipe. It's based on the 5 Minute Artisan Bread recipe. It's a stupid simple recipe that always makes amazing bread.

Bread Baking for Beginners

Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft, from the CIA. Packed full of tons of recipes, from standard plain dough recipes and sauces, to a chapter with full desserts made from the foundational components from other chapters. The recipes are scaled for very large batches though, so you’ll probably have to scale down (some have baker’s % though).

This was my first time making bread all by myself and I chose to make chocolate babka. I’m so happy with the way it turned out! I used Bonnie Ohara’s recipe from her book “Bread Baking for Beginners ”!

> It’s in Bonnie Oharas book “bread making for beginners”! On IG as @alchemybread

Just a head's up, I think you may have meant Bread Baking for Beginners by Bonnie Ohara

I knew this picture reminded me of something when I saw it!

Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads https://www.amazon.com/dp/1641521198/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_JOiBCbJYNVCPB

It’s from Alchemy Bread’s book: Bread Baking for Beginners

Bread Baking for Beginners

Cinnamon sugar doughnuts, sufganiyot, and yeast doughnuts. The chocolate ones are from this cookbook.

Textbook croissant.

This book changed my baking life:

https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Apprentice-15th-Anniversary/dp/1607748657

Jeff Hertzberg. Here’s the link to The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking

Recipe was from Paul Hollywood’s book ‘Bread’

Paul Hollywood's Bread https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1408840693

http://www.amazon.com/Bernard-Claytons-Complete-Book-Breads/dp/0743287096/ref=sr_1_20?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418611234&sr=1-20&keywords=Bread

http://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/0811870413/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418611228&sr=1-8&keywords=Bread

Recipe is based on Bread Illustrated with some adjustments made for high-altitude.

OO Is this the Boule recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day?

Edit: fixed book link

If you are wanting to get into bread here is the book I bought:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1607748657

Walks you through all kinds of different breads and methods.

There's a new edition out this year: Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft
It's by the Culinary Institute of America and has a lot of photos!

Or if you're lazy like me, Artisan Bread in 5

I can't recommend this book enough. For years bread (and pie crusts) were my buagboos, now at least I can make a simple tasty no knead loaf every weekend (that molds by wednesday even made on monday).

Start with simple Flour, water, salt, yeast no kneads...be patient...don't get discouraged

That's the method recommended in Jim Lahey's book "My Pizza". Here's an excerpt:

> With electric ovens that turn off at 500°F or so, place the stone on a rack about 4 inches from the top heating element (not the 8 inches called for with gas) and preheat, on bake, at 500°F [or the max temp your oven allows] for the usual 30 minutes. Then, to boost the heat of the stone without the oven’s elements shutting down, open the oven door a few inches and leave it ajar for about 30 seconds. Some of the ambient heat will escape, but the stone will stay just as hot. Now close the oven door and switch to broil for 10 minutes to heat the surface to the maximum. Open the door and slide the pizza in to broil. Because the stone is so close to the element, you may need to pull the rack out a few inches to get the pie centered on the stone; do it quickly and don’t worry about losing too much heat. With the door closed, broil for roughly 2 minutes longer than specified for gas [about 4 minutes for gas, so 6 for electric]—until the crust is adequately charred but not burnt and the toppings are bubbling.”
>