Bread 101

[handmc]

Hopefully this wasn't covered recently.

I love to cook, but I can't bake. I love bread, I want to learn how to make it. I don't like what I have tasted out of baking machines and truth be told would like to learn to do it myself.

Can I learn this art without enrolling in a cooking school? Any books I should start with when it comes to making bread?

Important caveat: I must at the same time try to tame the cook in me from improvising. My struggle with baking has always been complusion to deviate from the recipe written. Its not that I'm a know it all - hardly, its just the cook in me.

[SethG]

Bread Books for the Home Baker.

[K8memphis]

Plus in "The eGullet Culinary Institute (eGCI)" there's a whole big excellent 'lesson' in sourdough bread making - great stuff.

Edited November 23, 2004 by K8memphis (log)

[handmc]

Wow that pretty much covers it. Thanks.

[chromedome]

You might want to check out "Flatbreads and Flavours" by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Flatbreads work pretty much the same way that loaf breads do, but to my mind they're more forgiving. Makes a great way to learn the basic techniques, and gives you some easy variations to satisfy that improvisational side of your character. Once you've cut your teeth on flatbreads, so to speak, loaf breads are pretty straighforward.

[jsolomon]

With regard to experimentation in bread-making. Yeast breads are generally of a more forgiving nature when you're not following the recipe exactly when compared to cakes. The chemistry is somewhat different between the two.

Good luck, and remember, people have been doing it for thousands of years. It's an art anyone can pick up without fear.

Edit to fix pre-caffeinated speling

Edited November 23, 2004 by jsolomon (log)

[SparrowsFall]

Trivially Easy Everyday Bread

Bread (basic bread, anyway) has *way* too much mystique about it. I developed the following to suit my lazy nature. It's almost easier than buying it. Basic everyday sandwich and toast bread. Nothing special.

In a regular-size cuisinart with the normal blade, put in:

2-1/4 cups warm-to-hot tapwater

a few tablespoons sugar

a packet of yeast (couple of teaspoons)

6 cups flour

1 tablespoon salt

Run it until it has trouble turning and you start smelling electricity.

Turn into an oiled bowl and let rise in a warm place for a couple of hours.

Cut into three pieces and form into loaves. (Knead it a bit while you do so to get rid of the big bubbles. Do it in your hands to avoid having to clean off a floured board.)

Press into lightly oiled loaf pans (can you say aerosol canola?) and let rise 20-30 minutes. Bake 30 minutes at 350.

Eat first hot pieces with butter and honey. (This step is crucial to the success of the recipe.)

Freezes wonderfully in ziploc bags. Defrosts in an instant in the microwave.

Thassit!

Steve

p.s. Don't clean the loaf pans every time. Too much work and not necessary. Just put them away until next time.

Edited November 23, 2004 by SparrowsFall (log)

[maui420]

i see a brick oven in your future.

Hopefully this wasn't covered recently.

I love to cook, but I can't bake. I love bread, I want to learn how to make it. I don't like what I have tasted out of baking machines and truth be told would like to learn to do it myself.

Can I learn this art without enrolling in a cooking school? Any books I should start with when it comes to making bread?

Important caveat: I must at the same time try to tame the cook in me from improvising. My struggle with baking has always been complusion to deviate from the recipe written. Its not that I'm a know it all - hardly, its just the cook in me.

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[polack]

I like you started this fantastic hobby a couple of months ago, that's baking bread with a sourdough starter, and am really enjoying not only the bread, but enjoying seeing the pleasure and raves from the people that enjoy it. After making bread with the machine I started to get adventurous and build a sourdough starter, with directions from Nancy Silvertons Le Brea baking cookbook and a lot of help from some of the finest breadbakers from this site. You can refer to sourdough starter thread for some valuable info on bread baking with sourdough starter.

Polack

[Chufi]

I like you started this fantastic hobby a couple of months ago, that's baking bread with a sourdough starter, and am really enjoying not only the bread, but enjoying seeing the pleasure and raves from the people that enjoy it.

←

I agree. For some reason people are really honored when they find out you have baked them fresh bread.. I only started baking bread a couple of months ago and it is addictive!!

Tonight I had a friend over for a bowl of soup and some bread.. these ridiculously easy buttermilk rolls that are mixed up in 5 minutes:

now the soup had involved lots of chopping, saute-ing and pure-ing (sp?) but it was the rolls she couldn't get enough of!

[Just loafing]

A few years ago, we were spending our first winter of six as caretakers of remote resorts on the coast of British Columbia. I heard Julia Child being interviewed on CBC radio concerning her then-new book Baking With Julia. She advised new breadbakers to pick a recipe, make it until you got it right, and go on from there. Having lots of spare time, I found a recipe for "Tender Swedish White Bread" and started experimenting. Eight years later, instead of having winters of solitude, filled with reading, sewing and watching nature go by, I'm back in civilization baking more than 200 loaves of bread a week at the small store we decided we should have. Oops! Susan