•A Bakers Guide To Chocolate
What’s the difference between bittersweet chocolate and semisweet chocolate? Can I use Dutch cocoa in all my recipes calling for cocoa? Understanding the difference in chocolate and how they are used is essential to baking. In this guide, we’ll identify the characteristics of those chocolates used in baking.
Cocoa is the dry chocolate powder derived from chocolate liquor. It comes in two types: natural and Dutch process. Dutch processed cocoa is processed with an alkaline. It is slightly...
•Ciabatta Italian Bread
This rustic Italian bread is unique. The dough is so wet that you don’t even shape the loaf—just scrape it onto the baking pan into any interesting shape. The resulting loaf is flat and irregular; Ciabatta in Italian means “old slipper”. The extra moisture in the dough creates an open, unusual crumb. The bread is baked in a steamy environment, which creates a wonderful chewy crust. We hope you enjoy this authentic Italian bread.
Note: Each step in the mixing of this bread is simple and...
•Don’t Know What Flour To Buy?
Confused at the array of flour available online or in the grocery store? Don’t know what to buy? We can help.
Buy bread flour for breads. If you want tender muffins or cookies, buy pastry flour. It’s the gluten content that makes breads chewy and the reduced amount of gluten that makes muffins crumbly. All-purpose flour is a compromise. (Many recipes call for all-purpose, not because it will make the best muffins but because the formulators know that all-purpose flour is what most people...
•Exploring The World Of Cornbread
We're partial to cornbread. We like its rustic texture and chewy goodness. We like its versatility—it works for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It complements eggs in the morning, a hearty soup for lunch, or a dinner meal such as pork chops or chicken. Cornbread always reminds us of the South and some of the best cornbread is the result of wonderful Southern bakers.
There's a wonderful world of cornbread to explore. The cornbreads that we have made the most are balanced with equal parts...
•Fried Breads From Around The World
When we started this project, we envisioned an overview of fried breads from around the world with a handful of accompanying recipes. We soon realized that this was a project with no end, that every culture seems to have fried breads with never ending iterations. We ended up with a sampling of breads. We hope that this whets your appetite. Do a little research and experimenting. Fried breads are wonderful—especially in the summertime when we may not want the oven on.
North America
Pancakes...
•Getting Your Bread To Rise For Light, Airy Loaves
Homemade bread shouldn’t be dense. You can make light airy loaves that are every bit as good as the bread from the local bakery. The secret is in using quality ingredients and getting your bread to rise properly. In this article, we’ll examine the factors that make your bread rise.
There are five important factors that make the difference between light, airy bread and a dense flop. None is difficult to manage—in fact, yeast is quite forgiving—but you’ll be a better bread baker if you...
•High Altitude Breads
Can you make bread and buns in the mountains?
We got a call from California this week, “I can make great bread in L.A. but at my cabin in Montana, it doesn’t turn out so well.”
We would like to help. This summer, you might find yourself at a cabin or in an RV high in the mountains. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy great bread.
Yeast products are not as sensitive to altitude as chemically leavened products. We have worked with yeasted breads at almost 11,000 feet in the Rockies. The trick...
•How Long Should I Let My Bread Rise
It depends. The best way to tell if the dough has risen enough is not by time—though it helps to set the timer so you don’t forget about your dough—but by look and feel. It will look soft and bloated. When you touch the dough, it will be soft and your finger will leave an indentation when lightly pressed against the dough. If it is not ripe, the dough will tend to slowly spring back.
If you want light, fluffy bread, the dough should rise until it is puffy. The more gas incorporated in...
•How To Bake Easy Focaccia With Your Bread Machine
This is just about as easy as it gets for some really good homemade focaccia. Make the dough in your bread machine (or with a stand-type mixer). It doesn't take a lot of time and it's a great project to tackle with the kids.
Here's how: Start with a lean, white bread machine mix, or use the recipe below. By lean, we mean one that is low fat and doesn’t call for fresh eggs. A buttermilk bread mix is perfect.
Easy Bread Machine Focaccia
Bread Ingredients
1 1/4 cups water 2 tablespoons...
•How To Bake Multi-grain Bread
A quick perusal of your baker’s shelves will tell you how popular multi-grain bread is. But it’s not hard to bake—you can make your own. You can use any recipe and add the cracked grain mixture though traditionally, a whole wheat recipe is used. The following instructions and recipe will tell you how.
With most cereal mixes, 1/3 cup to 6 tablespoons of cereal per loaf is about the right ratio. If you want soft cereal bits in your bread, soak the cereal for an hour in hot water before...
•How To Buy And Store Baking Ingredients
Fresher is nearly always better
Food deteriorates over time. Sometimes it does so very slowly but it does deteriorate. Expiration dates and “best by” dates are misleading. Food does not stay magically fresh up until the expiration date and then it’s suddenly bad. Think of it as straight-line event. The fresher, the better.
Generally, expiration dates and “best by” dates are not governed by regulations. They are set by the processor who has its own agenda, are subject to judgments, and...
•How To Buy Cinnamon
Upgrading to a quality cinnamon may be the easiest improvement you can make in your baking and often, the quality of the cinnamon makes a dramatic difference in the quality of your product. But how do you know what cinnamon to buy?
There are three types of cinnamon to consider. Korintje cassia cinnamon comes from Indonesia, usually Sumatra. It comes from the cassia tree, not the true cinnamon tree, and is the cinnamon we are most familiar with. Good quality Korintje cassia is sweet and...
•How To Color Easter Eggs
It's fun to color Easter eggs. Pink and yellow and lavender eggs are part of the Easter tradition. And of course, kids love colors.
Learn the proper way to color eggs plus learn how to boil an egg and avoid the green on the yolk.
1. Choose fresh eggs free from cracks.
2. Commercial egg producers coat their eggs with an oil to help seal them. Wash the eggs in a mild detergent to remove the oil and to let the color adhere more readily to the eggs.
3. Boil the eggs to the "hard boil" stage....
•How To Make Easy Sourdough Bread
Sourdough simply uses wild yeast in place of commercial yeast to leaven the bread. It relies on the wild yeasts that are in the air all around us and cultures those yeasts in a warm, wet environment created with water, flour, and sometimes other components.
When creating a sourdough starter, we always felt like we were on an expedition trying to trap invisible yeastie beasties with our flour and water concoctions. Because we couldn’t see the beasties, we were never sure what we had...
•How To Read A Label
You can learn a lot from a label—what’s in a package and how good it is for you. But you have to know how to read the label. Let’s see if we can help.
There are two parts to every label, the ingredient listing and the nutrition table. Let’s tackle the ingredient list first.
The ingredients are always listed in order of dominance by weight, that is, the ingredient weighing the most is listed first. You will often see ingredients followed by parentheses. Those parentheses identify what is in...
•How Yeast Works
If you are going to be a bread baker, you should know yeast. Yeast is the magic ingredient of the baking world. It's alive and master bakers have learned to cultivate yeast as a living thing in their bread and pastry doughs. In this section we will explore the different types of yeast and learn how to cultivate yeast in our products to make the best breads.
Our grandparents used—and many commercial bakers still use—fresh yeast rather than the dry yeast that we buy in the store. Fresh yeast...
•Making Great Hamburger (or Sandwich) Buns
We've said it before, “Buns make the burger” and nothing makes a better burger than homemade buns. In fact, once you've had a burger on a fresh homemade bun, burgers will never be the same.
You can use your favorite bread mix (or bread recipe) to make some terrific hamburger or sandwich buns. A two-loaf mix will make about eighteen large hamburger buns and a single-loaf mix or bread machine mix will make eight or ten.
Mix the dough according to the package or recipe directions and then...
•Selecting And Baking Your Holiday Ham
Use this guide to help you select and prepare your baked ham for that special meal. With this guide, you will be able to identify and understand the various types of hams and select the best ham for your family. We’ll even tell you how to bake your ham.
This guide is organized in a question-and-answer format for easy reference.
What are the different types of hams that I should consider?
A ham is cured pork, specifically the entire back leg of a hog. But ham is very different than uncured...
•Sesame And Oat Cracker Recipe
You make these crackers just like sugar cookies except that you don’t have to decorate them. Roll out the dough, cut them into rounds or shapes, and place them on the baking sheet.
For this unusual cracker, you grind roll oats in a food processor or blender—two cups coarse ground oat flour for one cup wheat flour. No wonder it’s a wholesome cracker.
The secret of crispy crackers is a long bake, long enough to drive the moisture from the crackers.
Ingredients
2 cups quick rolled oats 1 cup...
•The Convenience Of Refrigerator Bran Muffins
Most of us experience busy mornings. Baking for breakfast is just out of the question. But how would you like to have healthy, out-of-the-oven bran muffins for breakfast while investing little of your busiest time? With these Refrigerator Bran Muffins, you can have hot muffins in less time than it takes to stop by the bakery. And with all natural ingredients, bran, and whole wheat flour, you'll know that you are starting your day right.
With this recipe, you can save time and effort...
•The Joys Of Refrigerator Cookies
Baking cookies seems to fill the house with a sense of well being and peace. Perhaps it is the smell of butter, vanilla, and spices emanating from the hot oven. Maybe it is the love and caring attention that is evident in cookies. Home, love, and cookies seem to go together.
Consider refrigerator, or icebox, cookies. They are the most convenient cookie. Drop cookies are quick cookies; refrigerator cookies are convenient cookies. Refrigerator cookies can be made up ahead of time--even months...
•The Marvelous Egg
Eggs are marvelous. They are used in so many products and in so many ways. They provide structure and mouth feel; they provide moisture and nutritional value. Baking would be dramatically different without the egg.
There are three parts to the egg:
The shell is fragile and porous. It is important to remember that eggs will absorb flavors and odors through the shell and therefore must be protected from strong smelling substances and unsanitary surfaces. A tainted egg will spoil your product....
•The Secrets Of Great Breads
Often we field questions about making great bread. Great bread is a matter of using the right ingredients and the right techniques—there’s no single secret that will make perfect bread. But really great bread is readily attainable. We’ve compiled our list of what goes into great bread.
1. The right flour. 2. An understanding of yeast. 3. A good dough conditioner. 4. A baker’s thermometer
Now this isn’t everything that goes into great bread but the baker that is armed with these four tools...
•What Not To Freeze
Freezers are wonderful inventions. They save us time and money. How many times do we head for the freezer when it's time to think about a meal? And for many of us, the freezer houses much of our emergency supply of food. But some things freeze better than others. We thought we would give you a partial listing of things that don't freeze well.
• Fried foods (especially deep fried foods): They taste stale • Gravies and sauces with wheat in them: They tend to separate. • High water...
•Why Do We Need To Knead?
Bread dough is transformed as it is kneaded. It becomes smoother, more elastic. It feels and looks different. Understanding what take place during the kneading process will make you a better baker.
Bread dough needs to be elastic in order to capture the gases created by the yeast, stretch as bubbles form in the dough, expand, and rise. Without that elasticity, bread would not have the open texture we enjoy nor would bread be chewy. But what creates that elasticity?
The endosperm of the...
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