Saturday, October 29

Pumpkin Rosemary Dinner Rolls

Pumpkin Rosemary Dinner Rolls

Boo!  Imagine the bright color and taste of pumpkin in a tender dinner roll. Just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving, this recipe for Pumpkin Rosemary Dinner Rolls would also make an excellent loaf of bread for slicing. Although there is a fair amount of sugar in the dough, the rolls aren’t too sweet.  The sugar feeds the yeast and makes the dough springy and alive. As with any dough that is soft and moist,

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Sunday, October 23

Butter Topped Toasting White Sandwich Bread

Butter Topped Toasting White Sandwich Bread

Our recipe for Butter Topped Toasting White Sandwich Bread bakes into a billowy loaf with a hint of sweetness and flecks of wheat germ. We use it to make BLT’s, tea sandwiches, toast, grilled cheese and Melba toast. This is Bread Makes the Meal Project Week Two. My project is about encouraging you to bake bread at home so that you can share it at any meal. Many of us grew up eating sliced white bread

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Bread Making Kneading By Hand

Once the dough rests, the gluten relaxes making it easier to knead. See how nuch smoother it is?

There is no better place to start bread making than by kneading your dough by hand.  It gives you a real feel for the transformation that takes place when wheat flour and water are combined. Even if you use a stand mixer or food processor to mix your bread dough or even if you try the no-knead method, you will learn a great deal about bread making from kneading by hand at least once. Here

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Measuring Flour by Volume

Measuring flour by volume

Weigh your ingredients. That’s what baker’s do.  Weighing is the only way to get consistent results.   An electronic scale is easy to use, relatively cheap and durable. But if you must use measuring cups, here are a few essentials when measuring flour by volume. Use dry measuring cups for dry ingredients like flour and sugar. Reserve the clear glass or plastic measuring cups for liquids. A one-cup household measuring cup holds from 3 ½ to

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Sunday, October 16

Irish Wheaten Bread

Irish Wheaten Bread

Irish Wheaten Bread is the simplest bread you can make. It is addicting and absolutely delicious, a fact made obvious when I baked the loaf pictured here. (We can’t stop eating it.)  The flavor of the whole wheat flour gives it an unexpected sweetness.   Although the texture is somewhat crumbly, the loaf slices neatly. This is Bread Makes the Meal Project Week One so I am going to spend a little time explaining the steps in

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Friday, October 14

Working with Wheat Flour – Flour Absorption

Flour absorption in two kinds of lfour

Different brands and types of flour absorb different amounts of water. If you use bread flour in place of all-purpose flour, or if you add stone ground whole wheat to your dough, you have to be prepared to adjust the amount of water you use when making bread.  When you are working with wheat flour, you’d be wise to become familiar with the concept of flour absorption. The absorbency of flour varies from grain to

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Tips for Using an Emile Henry Baking Cloche

Bread from Emile Henry Bread Cloche

There’s a very quick learning curve when baking with the Emile Henry Baking cloche. I have discovered a few tricks to ensure the best results. Here are some of my Tips for Using an Emile Henry Baking Cloche: • Use the right amount of dough to fill up the cloche without crowding. I bake 2 to 2 ¼-pounds of bread dough in my Emile Henry Baking Cloche. That is a batch of bread dough made

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Bread Makes the Meal Recipe Contest

Bread Makes the Meal

The Bread Makes the Meal recipe contest has ended but not my commitment to helping you bake delicious, satisfying breads at home. Visit the Bread Baking page of my site for links or find bread recipes here. Here is the text from the original Bread Makes the Meal celebration: This fall baking season, I’m launching a month long celebration of baking bread at home­—Bread Makes the Meal.  Each week, for the next five weeks, I

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Think Like a Baker – Wheat Flour for Bread Baking

Varieties of Wheat Grown in Vermont

Learning about wheat flour helps you become a better baker. Wheat flour is made from wheat berries, the small seeds from which the next crop of wheat is grown. The berries are milled into fine flour. Each tiny wheat berry consists of the bran, the germ and the endosperm. Bran is the tough outer coating that protects the wheat berry in a hard shell. There are several layers to the bran that are removed when

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Think Like a Baker – Steam in the Oven

Think like a baker -Loaf burnished and golden from steam in the oven

Steam in the oven during the first few minutes of baking bread has many benefits. The moist steam reinvigorates the yeast in the dough. Steam gives bread dough time to expand: the added moisture keeps the dough from drying out before it has time to rise. Steam also produces bread with a thin, chewy crust and seductive shine, what you see in the loaf of country wheat bread pictured here. Breads baked without steam may

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"Let no man fancy he knows how to dine
Till he has learnt how taste and taste combine."

-Horace, Satires, 2.4

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