Using A Sourdough Starter Sourdough Starter Primer This is the last page in our “Sourdough Starter Primer”! And WOW – we’re FINALLY going to talk about using a sourdough starter! The payoff for all the work in starting and maintaining a starter is finally within sight! There are two major ways to use sourdough starter, […]
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Breadmaking Troubleshooting Tips It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been baking. It doesn’t matter how careful you are in selecting your ingredients. It doesn’t matter how careful you are. It doesn’t matter where you went to school. It doesn’t matter if you’re an amateur or a professional. Sooner or later, your bread won’t come out
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How Do I Keep My Bread Fresh? There are few things as wonderful as a slice of fresh bread. Dan Leader in his book “Bread Alone” mentions that fresh bread was a weapon of war – in the Second World War a number of generals had their bakeries make fresh bread for their soldiers several
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Tolerance When bakers talk about tolerance chances are good they mean how long a fully risen dough can wait to be baked without losing final loaf quality. There are a lot of variables in tolerance. More highly hydrated doughs have less tolerance than firmer doughs. Wheat breads can have as long as an hour’s tolerance.
Reviving a Sourdough Starter Sourdough Starter Primer This is a part of our “Sourdough Starter Primer”, an in depth look at how to start, maintain, store, revive and even use a sorudough starter. A systems analyst’s mantra says, “It takes a consistent process to produce a consistent product.” I learned this when I was a
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Retarding Dough For Flavor Enhancement and Process Control The information below is taken from an EXCELLENT discussion in the Bread Baker’s Guild of America mailing list. It is hard to overstate how much I have learned from this group, and strongly encourage any serious baker, amateur or professional, to join and support the guild. Much of
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Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread This was a recurring favorite at the farmers market and in the health food stores where we sold bread. It inspired many of the other raisin breads in this book because it taught us to really love raisins in bread. It’s a great bread. It is based on our Challah, but
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How Do I Fit Baking Into My Schedule? A More Hands-on overview of fitting baking into your busy schedule Any number of times I mention that you can adjust your baking schedule to conform to your work schedule, or other facets of your life. It IS easier if you work at home or are retired.
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Superpeel here he comes to save the day! A good while ago the good people at SuperPeel asked us to look at their SuperPeel. At the time, I was up to my ears in starting a bakery and while I looked at the SuperPeel, and while I liked the SuperPeel, I never wrote it up.
Bannetons, or rising baskets, are available from many sources. Many specialty houses have them at prices starting at $20.00 each and going up from there. If you are in the USA, and near a Cost Plus Import house, Cost Plus usually has them for around $5.00. The liners are a bit weak. If you wash
Baking stones, Part 3 – Transferring Risen Bread To The Tiles, Safely This page discusses how to get a fully risen, and therefore fragile, loaf of free-form bread onto the hot baking tiles without deflating the loaf of bread. There are a number of ways of doing this. To start with, I suggest using a
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Baking stones, Part 2 How do I use them? In the first part of this three part discussion of baking stones, we talked about selecting a baking stone. We prefer to use either the fairly high dollar Fibrament Baking stones or unglazed quarry tiles. We feel Hearthkits and Cloche’s rob us of too much baking
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