Reddit Reddit reviews Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes

We found 14 Reddit comments about Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Cookbooks, Food & Wine
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Baking
Bread Baking
Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes
Wiley
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14 Reddit comments about Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes:

u/feelin_crumby · 5 pointsr/Sourdough

I have a lot of bread books, and I will recommend Hamelman's Bread until I die. And then I will be cremated with it.

I've been baking bread professionally for 6 or 7 years and it is, by far, the book I reference the most. Accessible for beginners, but substantial enough for a professional. The levain (sourdough) section is wonderful and informative.

I rarely recommend Tartine for beginners. Chad's high hydration doughs can be really unforgiving for some and will quickly deter the less... determined. That being said, if you find yourself enjoying the pursuit, Chad Robertson is the king of artisan bread in the States, and that book does have a lot to offer. I do love it.

Also, I generally suggest avoiding Peter Reinhart when it comes to learning sourdough.

u/Inquebiss · 5 pointsr/Breadit

Unfortunately, there are few recipes that are actually fool proof, as bread baking is more about technique than ingredients. Understanding the fundamentals of the bread baking process such as mixing, gluten development, and fermentation will really help increase your bread baking proficiency. A lot of people start out with no-knead recipes, but I don't think that helps anybody actually understand bread baking.

Learning how to make a great sourdough starts with knowing the basics. There's seriously a lot of great information in the sidebar, and I would check out the Recommended Reading and FAQs page as a starting point.

Once you get your toes wet, there's some great books out there including the aforementioned Flour, Water, Salt Yeast as well as Jeffry Hamelman's Bread.

u/proofbox · 3 pointsr/Breadit

Yeah no worries, I really like helping new bakers out, so it's no sweat. My biggest piece of advice I can give is to be patient! With the bread and also with yourself. If you don't think your bread is ready for the next step, let it go longer, and if you make a mistake, don't beat yourself up. Remember, it's only bread, and making a great loaf takes practice. I recommend picking up some literature. My favorite reference book is "Bread" by Jeffrey Hamelman, here's a link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1118132718/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1466286149&sr=8-1&pi=SL75_QL70&keywords=bread+jeffrey+hamelman

Also "Flour Water Yeast Salt" has a good step by step guide to basic sourdough and its simple variations. I forget the author of that one ATM.

As for practice, there's nothing you can really do besides make bread. Make sure you are equipped with the necessary tools though. You'll need a bowl scraper, a bench knife, kouche, a scale, and if you're not using a big industrial deck oven you'll need a cast iron or ceramic dutch oven (this is for steam. There's a lot of different methods for home bakers to steam their bread, but this I find works the best.) Probably the most important thing you can do in the mean time is read about "bakers percentage". It is a way of looking at a bread formula that turns anything into a ratio. It's super easy, and will help you really understand ratios of ingredients in the long run.


So, here's the scoop on Starter. Starter, or "preferment", is a general term for a culture of yeast feeding on carbohydrates found in flour. There are many types of starter that achieve different desired effects in the final product of the bread. The most versatile and popular starter is called "Levain". Levain will add sourness to your bread, increase shelf life, intensify flavor, strengthen gluten to make a chewy crumb (the soft spongy inside of bread with all the holes) and increase health benefits through longer fermentation. The method for making Levain is a multiple day process, and it could take 1 to 2 weeks to fully mature depending on the heat of your kitchen (the hotter, the faster) but as a rule of thumb, don't use your levain until at least 2 weeks just to be on the safe side. If Levain is too young the bread will not properly rise. Here is the equipment you'll need

A Mason jar

A cloth and a rubber band for the top

The method is simple. Yeast is already present all around you. In the air, on your hands, in flour, on the inside the Mason jar, everywhere! What you are trying to do is culture that yeast so it can reproduce fast enough to leven bread. The formula is as follows

100g water

100g white bread flour

Dash of honey

Sprinkle of raisins or any other dried fruit

The honey helps the yeast feed faster, and dried fruit has a TON of yeast on the skin, so adding these few ingredients will give your levain a kick start. If at any point your starter seems slow, you can add honey and raisins to the next batch to give it that jump start. So you mix these ingredients all together inside the Mason jar. Then cover the top with the cloth and rubber band, and put it in a warm place overnight. You do not want your starter to be cold, or the yeast will take forever to get mature.

So the next day you are going to "perpetuate" your starter. That means that your going to take a bit of the old starter and give it some fresh water and flour to feast on. You're going to want to do this in 24 hour intervals every day. Here's the formula you should follow for the first week:

100g water

50g white bread flour

50g whole wheat flour

15g yesterday's starter

Mix the 15g of starter with the 100g of water, then add the flour, it will make things easier. Once you make the new starter, you can throw the rest of yesterday's batch in the garbage, there really is no more use for it. You should taste your starter every day, you'll be amazed at how sour it gets. Also, if your starter isn't bubbling in at most 4 or 5 days, there is something wrong and you should start over. After the first week, you should change your formula to this:

80g water

70g white bread flour

20g whole wheat flour

10g rye flour

10g starter

Less water will stiffen the starter and make it move slower. The added white flour gives the yeast more starches to convert to carbs for food, and the rye will give the starter a pleasant acidic note, it will definitely come through in your bread. For a less sour starter, omit the rye flour and replace it with white bread flour. After a week, your starter should be mature! How you can tell if it has reached maturity is by taking a small pinch and putting it in a glass of warm water. If it stays together and floats to the top, you've got yourself mature starter! Simple as that. Now you can make delicious, nutritious, crusty French bread any time you want. I also find keeping a levain starter on deck makes me want to bake bread more often at home.

Something to keep in mind, if you forget to feed your starter, it is not the end of the world. Old starter can still be used to make new starter. After a few days of neglect, the starter will start to develop a small layer of grey alcohol on the top, and that's totally fine! The starter isn't "going bad" or anything, it's just run out of food, and the yeast cells have gone dormant. Remember, yeast is the most abundant microorganism on Earth, it has been around for millenia, it can survive a very long time without food. I've taken 3 week old starter, fed it for 2 days, and it was good as new, so whatever you do, DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR OLD STATER AND START OVER.

If feeding daily becomes expensive, I suggest using this formula

60g water

95g white bread flour or AP flour

5g rye flour

15g yesterday's starter

Let it sit out for about 3 - 5 hours, than keep this variation in the fridge, and feed it weekly. This is also good if you are going on vacation and don't have a way of feeding your levain every day. Just remember a few days in advance to switch it back to the other formula before you use it.

And it's as simple as that! Good luck on your home baking adventure. I find it to be immensely rewarding, and what's better than having fresh baked nutritious bread to feed friends and family? If you have any more questions, or you run into a problem, I'll be happy to help any way I can. There's a TON of information to absorb, and I know it can be a little overwhelming, so feel free to ask.

Happy baking!

u/squidsquidsquid · 3 pointsr/Breadit

https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Book-Techniques-Recipes/dp/1118132718

He's got a really great comprehensive section on braiding, even weaving, different kinds of dough. I find it really helpful.

u/yumarama · 2 pointsr/Breadit

Check it out here at Amazon UK - it has a "Look Inside" feature so you can get a bit of a sense what you'll find.

If you still need to save a few pence, you could also look for a used (or new) copy of this, or even the first edition. The new, second edition has a few more recipes and some updates in the "techniques" section, but the original one is still chock full of great info.

u/mr_richichi · 2 pointsr/Baking

I have a cookbook obsession, I have roughly 500 that are somewhat organized so I feel like I can be of great use here. I will break it down by type to make it easier.

Bibles

u/kit58 · 2 pointsr/Breadit
u/ETABLERT · 2 pointsr/Breadit

I've never purchased nor used a commercial starter but I know that Bertinet sells one which you can find here.

Personally I would put the money towards a decent book such as this one. The only reason for this being that a decent book will and teach you so much more about the whole process and help your bread baking massively in the long run. At the end of the day a starter only needs 3 ingredients. Flour, water and time.

u/myriad22 · 1 pointr/Breadit

I really enjoy Bread by Jeffery Hamelman for an in-depth look at the whole process, recipes and instructions are great too. http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Book-Techniques-Recipes/dp/1118132718

u/oddible · 1 pointr/Breadit

In Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread he identifies that commercial yeasts are bred for rigor so they will overpower local varieties.

u/FiorelloLaGuardia · 1 pointr/Breadit

I got the recipe from Bread by Hamelman. Here's a pic https://imgur.com/gallery/D5EwT

The book is probably my favorite cook book and full of incredible bread recipes. Here's a link

Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118132718/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fS0tzbN0J0JG7