Skill a Month: Learn to Bake Bread

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In January, I channeled my love for the smell of homemade bread into learning how to actually, you know...bake homemade bread.

Here's what I learned along the way: 


  1. Baking bread is ridiculously easy...IF you have the equipment.  And by equipment, I mean a stand mixer with dough hook.  I think that's why I've been intimidated in the past.  Luckily Santa gave me one this Christmas. 
  2. Everything takes 3 hours.  They don't tell you this.  The recipe might say it takes 40 "active" minutes with 2.5 hours "additional time" that includes a double rise.  And you'll miss this and think the recipe takes 40 minutes.  No matter what recipe I made, they all took about 3 hours.  I found Sundays a good time to do this because I usually had a chunk of time in the middle of the day. 
  3. There are TWO kinds of yeast!  I've only ever known the kind in the packet (active dry yeast).  But most recipes call for instant yeast.  This is different.  You keep it in your fridge and you don't have to worry about dissolving it in water - you just throw it in!  I had no idea this existed.
  4. The smells ARE amazing.
  5. The Sandy Bosch store offers free (!) classes every Saturday.   I took a class on baking whole wheat bread and it was helpful - but also made me feel like I need to grind my own wheat? (all the good bakers do it, apparently).

Here's what I made: 

French bread dinner rolls.  Please note that I just made the rolls whatever size I wanted.  Uniformity? Pah!  For sissies.  Paul Hollywood would have a field day with these rolls.







 Wheat bread - Here, too, my sizing is out of control - look at the size of this loaf!






Focaccia - Flat on a sheet pan, hard to mess up.


More dinner rolls (different recipe) - I'm getting better, folks.  This time I'm actually weighing my dough balls, and look how pretty!  I also liked the taste of this recipe better than the first. 









Even though this skill was only for January, I think I'll continue trying new recipes and increasing my confidence in what I can make.  Just maybe not every week!

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