Saturday, January 24, 2009

Bread Lessons - Baking Bread at Home!

Internet and books have been my teachers in a lot of areas of my life, including art and food. I bake 100% whole grain breads, including sourdough(naturally leavened) and straight dough breads (commerial yeast raised.)


"Baking Bread at Home!" Sounds so intimidating... But no, it's sooooo easy, and so effortless once you get a hang of it and get your concepts clear!


I am putting together this compilation of articles and tutorials to help anyone interested to have good information readily available to them. If anyone local in Prescott, AZ would like to have a hands-on bread class with me, feel free to contact me.


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The Fresh Loaf is an excellent resource for learning everything there is to learn about bread baking. There is a very active forum on this site where you can have any doubts cleared right away. "Sign up" on it, they never send any spam!!!
They also have several lessons and Videos which I will be adding a link here on my blog as well.


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Books
I never bake breads from books anymore. I used to when I got started... They are really good for getting familiar with baking, learning the "physics" & "chemistry" of bread (yes literally!)
But now that I have gotten all that down, all I need is to add whatever I want to my bread. I don't need to look at any recipes. It's like looking up in a cookbook every-time how to make oatmeal!!! ;)
This is the goal of my collection of these bread-threads on my blog, so you can make bread with your eye-closed and it can become a second nature.
Anyhow, I will list some of the good books here. Go to the library and find these books and soak up the theory, not the recipes!!! ;)


The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread (very good book for theory)

Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor(good book for theory)

Crust & Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers (good recipes if I remember right... good bagels)

The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking (very good book for whole grain recipes)


So I suggest find any of the first two form the library if possible and read them like a novel!!!

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