Max Bernstein is a baker, cook, and educator, who studied bread baking at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and has cooked lots of other things at lots of other places.
Hi everyone, and welcome to the bread-baking club. Think of this as a safe space, committed to talking about—and demystifying—your breads and doughs. It's a vast world with a whole lot of potential for experimentation, but the root of the problem is this: Yeast, mysterious and giving, seems to scare the crap out of people.
To end! (Please don't stop reading. I had to, just this once.) But in all seriousness, why should it be so scary? People started making bread a long time ago, before computers, bicycles, and shrink-wrapping existed. Our grandparents knew how to make it, and theirs too. Bread is one of humanity's oldest crafted foods, after all, and making great bread for yourself isn't just possible, it's often relaxing and delicious...plus it just so happens to keep your apartment nice and toasty come wintertime.*
Basic Quick Bread Recipe Baker Bettie
Our goal is to break down some of the basics of the techniques, chemistry, and superstition behind great bread, and make the whole idea of getting your hands in some dough a little less intimidating. This column isn't about baking the
I want to start with a look at the four major stages of bread baking that we're going to be working with throughout this series:
These pillars are going to be our template, and as we work through bread formulas together, they're all going to fit roughly into this framework, or we're going to demand to see their hall-passes. Along the way, we're going to talk about some of the vocabulary bakers use to talk to each other in the wee hours of the morning. WTF is a bread formula and who-the-sh*t is proofing? You'll know the ins and outs soon enough.
How To Bake Bread In A Dutch Oven
And speaking of formulas, our first formula is going to be our workhorse: a tasty, crusty, airy, middle-of-the-road loaf that's so versatile you can shove seeds into it or make it into a rye. This bread is delicious as-is, and it'll be a great starting point for trying out your own ideas, making pan loaves or hearth loaves, French toast, bread crumbs, garlic bread, or a classic PB&J.
The Workhorse loaf is white bread done plain and simple, with no frills. The following, four-ingredient formula yields two crusty hearth loaves with a nice, open crumb. It uses all white flour, and only calls for commercial yeast...for now. We'll get into the weird stuff in later posts.
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A formula? Is it the same as a recipe? Almost. It's like a recipe, but it's based on ratios (the percentages listed next to our weights above), not finite amounts. Why is this helpful? It's important for two main reasons. First, it makes scaling a recipe up or down really easy. Some days at work, I need to make two loaves of this bread; some days I might need a dozen. Memorizing the ratios in a formula allows me to easily make the amount of bread I want. Second, if we think of bread recipes in ratios,
Simply Sandwich Bread (recipe + Video)
, it makes it easier to compare different kinds of bread with each other based on how much of each ingredient is present relative to the others—regardless of how many loaves we're making at once. As we get more practice looking at these ratios, it will allow us to alter a bread's formula to achieve certain qualities in the bread. It will also allow us to look at new formulas and have an idea of what it should feel and look like as we move through the process before we even start baking. That means fewer failed experiments.
And that's just about all you need to get started—well, that and some essential bread-baking equipment, including a stand mixer, bench scraper, and some kind of oven-safe, lidded dish to bake it in.
Dutch oven with lid; digital scale; bowl scraper; bench scraper; 2 (2-pound) capacity bread proofing baskets or medium mixing bowls lined with lightly floured cloth; spray bottle filled with water.
My Mother's Best, No Knead Peasant Bread Recipe
This recipe requires a scale to measure the ingredients—it's a far more accurate way to bake and will deliver much more consistent results. This recipe works with multiple types of yeast: choose whichever is available to you.
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2, 000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
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Bread For Beginners
, it makes it easier to compare different kinds of bread with each other based on how much of each ingredient is present relative to the others—regardless of how many loaves we're making at once. As we get more practice looking at these ratios, it will allow us to alter a bread's formula to achieve certain qualities in the bread. It will also allow us to look at new formulas and have an idea of what it should feel and look like as we move through the process before we even start baking. That means fewer failed experiments.
And that's just about all you need to get started—well, that and some essential bread-baking equipment, including a stand mixer, bench scraper, and some kind of oven-safe, lidded dish to bake it in.
Dutch oven with lid; digital scale; bowl scraper; bench scraper; 2 (2-pound) capacity bread proofing baskets or medium mixing bowls lined with lightly floured cloth; spray bottle filled with water.
My Mother's Best, No Knead Peasant Bread Recipe
This recipe requires a scale to measure the ingredients—it's a far more accurate way to bake and will deliver much more consistent results. This recipe works with multiple types of yeast: choose whichever is available to you.
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2, 000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site.
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