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...

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...

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...