A typical oven loses a lot of heat when the door is opened to put your loaves in. Some of this heat loss is due to hot air escaping, and some of it is because of the cold dough you are adding. The more thermal mass your oven has, the less heat it will lose. The less heat that your oven loses at the start of baking, the better start your bread has towards getting a caramelised crust and beautiful oven spring. How to provide thermal mass • Baking in a preheated cast iron dutch oven achieves...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Why do some bakers recommend baking as high as 500ºF? And why do some recipes say to bake at 350ºF? These temperature recommendations are mostly to do with personal preferences, and also whether the bread is enriched with butter, sugar, milk, or anything else. A perfectly baked loaf A brown, caramelised crust will mean that the crumb of the bread will also have more flavour, as the crumb ‘breathes in’ flavour from the crust. For that caramelisation to happen, there needs to be some residual...
13 days ago • 2 min read
What makes this sourdough pizza crust magic is its flexibility. You can make this same dough, and depending on your schedule, there are three different timelines you can work with: You can make this as a simple same-day pizza dough instead of overnight - if your kitchen is warm it will take around six hours to ferment, or a bit longer if it’s cold. To develop more flavour, and have a more flexible schedule, instead of making this as a same-day sourdough pizza dough recipe, it can also be...
26 days ago • 3 min read
Spelt is an ancient grain that has a few quirks that you will want to know before you try using it to replace wheat. In this email I’ll be sharing how to work with spelt, and the best recipes to make with it.Spelt is related to wheat, but many people who can't handle modern wheat will find that they can eat spelt without problems, especially when it's slowly fermented in a sourdough bread. Spelt does contain gluten, so it's not suitable for celiacs. How to work with spelt Spelt makes...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Sometimes there is a bit of fuss made in baking circles about always using hard red wheat flour and other high gluten flours for bread. Or sometimes the fuss is about keeping several different types of wheat in the kitchen for different purposes, or always using two or more types of wheat in bread. Does this advice lead to better bread? Or does it overcomplicate things? In this email I’ll be looking at the different types of wheat, and how to choose one that works for you. Red wheat vs white...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Underbaked bread is dense, gummy, and goes stale quickly. Slightly overbaked bread can still taste great, but perfectly baked bread gives you the best flavour, texture, and shelf life. In this email, I’ll show you exactly how to tell when your loaf is ready, plus how to adjust your temperature and timing for consistent results. Adjusting temperature and time The amount of time a loaf will take, and how it will behave when fully baked will depend on your baking temperature. Higher...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
How to prepare for food shortages the relaxed and sensible way, with sourdough The event that got me started with sourdough was when I moved out of the city and ran out of yeast. I’d wondered about making sourdough before this moment, but somehow it was just easier to rely on what I knew, and on little lumps of fresh yeast bought from the gourmet grocery shop in the city. So there we were, with no sources of yeast nearby, and I had a family to feed. I made my first sourdough starter, and...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
A Simple Boule with Many Options A simple dutch oven boule During the recipe testing process for my upcoming sourdough book, this simple bread was one of the most popular recipes. It’s an easy recipe that makes a beautiful loaf, and depending on your schedule and your priorities, you can either make this as a same-day bake, ferment it overnight, or proof it overnight. There’s also a bunch more options for flours and inclusions, which I’ll discuss at the end of the recipe (and I’ll also give...
2 months ago • 2 min read
What is autolyse? Autolyse is the process of mixing the flour and water together until just mixed, always without any salt, and most of the time without any starter or pre-ferment, and leaving it to hydrate for ten minutes to one hour. This is a good technique to know, and in some circumstances can help you make better bread, but it is not always necessary. Doing an autolyse with the starter added is often referred to as a ‘fermentolyse’. Autolyse was invented as a way to improve the quality...
2 months ago • 4 min read
How steam works Baking from the baker’s perspective sometimes looks like one simple process - put the bread in the oven, and the bread bakes. For the bread, it is an entirely different matter, with two distinct stages of baking. During the first stage of baking, which lasts around twenty minutes, the bread hits the oven, and it continues to rise with very rapid yeast activity until the yeast dies off when the dough reaches around 60ºC (140ºF) During this oven spring stage it’s good to have...
3 months ago • 4 min read