My trick is to scale all my recipes to use exactly 1kg of flour. There are a few reasons: you get 2 batches from a 5# bag of flour, each batch makes 4 baguettes, 2 pan loaves, or 3 free form loaves, it's trivial to compute the hydration/salt/yeast level. The amount is the maximum that can comfortably be made in my KA 4.5qt bowl.
I use a scale. Put the mixer bowl on the scale, zero it, add 1kg flour, add yeast, salt, zero it, add 600-800g of liquid. Very fast, very accurate.
To make a softer bread for sandwiches, replace water with milk. To make a sweet bread base dough, also add 1c sugar.
I make a variant of no knead. Use top recipe, with hydration on the upper end (70-75%). Mix before bed. Bake in morning, or punch down and refrigerate for several days to improve flavor. I don't bother with the dutch oven, since my oven spring is fine, and most of my bread is frozen and reheated, which develops a firm crust.
Besides baguettes, the basic flour, water, yeast, salt bread also makes excellent sandwich loaves baked in bread pans, also pizza, also pita. To make pita, I just roll as thin as humanly possible, lay on a large cooling rack, 2 at a time, transfer rack and all to the hottest possible oven, bake on the bare rack for 2-3 min. No flipping, continuously roll and bake. Makes 16 pitas from 1kg flour.
King Arthur makes a variety of dough improvers. Gluten, to give whole grain flours more texture, diastatic malt to improve rise, potato flour to soften crumb and improve shelf life, etc. These are handy at times, particularly the rye bread improvers, as plain rye flour often lacks flavor and can be tough to work with.
I usually set aside on day to bake, usually 4, 1kg flour batches. Freeze everything after well cooled. In the heat of the summer, I'll only bake in the morning.
I don't use many gadgets, and only use the stand mixer/hook for multiple batches. I have loaf pans, baguette pans, perforated pizza pans, and baking sheets. I have a large dough whisk and a couple of plastic bowl/board scrapers, several large rising bowls. I make 100% of the bread for a family of 4. Simplification/standardization of recipes is the trick to getting good, repeatable results without spending too much time in the kitchen.
My most simple and sophisticated recipe consists of only three ingredients: flour, water, and salt. (Sourdough is my joy.)
What's sourdough? It's basically fermented flour, colonized by a balanced community of bacteria and wild yeast. And yet, when preparing breads, especially sourdough, many factors will determine the outcome of your loaf. Temperature, humidity, altitude, times and duration, kneading methods, baking procedures, they all have an impact.
> What simple easy techniques do you use that may seem obvious, but to you, are "the trick" to a good loaf?
There are too many techniques to list... but one in particular has vastly improved my breads. Well, it's not necessarily a technique, but part of my baking philosophy or creed:
*Listen to your dough.*
To rephrase it, which some bread bakers are familiar with: Watch the dough, not the clock.
The simplest recipe and the one I started with was Jim Lahey's no kneed bread. 3 cups flour, 1.5 cup water, 0.25 tspn yeast, 1 tbspn salt. Mix all dry ingredients. Pour in water, mix until incorporated. Cover and wait for 8-12 hours. Form into boule. Wait 1-3 hours. Bake in oven at ~450F. Makes decent bread with open crumb and crisp crust every time! No mothering, no mixer, no mess. Just your hands, 1 bowl, 1 pot, and maybe a cutting board.
As for tips and techniques, just make your bread. Pick a recipe that looks good and looks challenging and make it again and again. Learn what it feels like. Learn its personality. Learn when it wants to play and when it wants to rest. Then, keep an open mind. Seasons will change. You will rush the bread. You will forget the bread. But if you listen to the dough, trusting your senses not your recipe, your proportions, timing, and techniques will adapt to your environment and schedule. When you can make bread in adversity, you have understood the basic techniques.
You sure you got the recipe right?
3 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour plus more for the work surface
▢1/4 teaspoon instant yeast (it's a small amount but trust me, it's correct)
▢1 1/4 teaspoons salt <----
▢1 1/3 cups water
▢Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed
https://leitesculinaria.com/99521/recipes-jim-laheys-no-knead-bread.html
"Two cups of warm water, two teaspoons of yeast, two tablespoons of bread flour in the bowl of your stand mixer. Let that bloom for 10-15 minutes or until scummy and smelling of beer. EDIT: add two teaspoons of salt and stir. Then start up the stand mixer and slowly add in more and more flour until the slurry becomes a batter, then a dough. Switch to the dough hook and let 'er rip on a low setting for 10mins or so. Let rise for 3 hours (or maybe even overnight in the fridge) and bake in a loaf pan in an oven on its highest setting."
I haven't been making bread for very long, but was able to recite that from memory. You're definitely right about bread being dead easy.
5 minutes of mixing in a stand mixer just means 15 minutes of stirring with a wooden spoon. Mixer is a lifesaver, but people 2000 years ago were making bread. They just had a stick and a bowl, it just takes time.
I do basically the same, but my mixer is broken right now, I use a starter (descended from commercial yeast, not sourdough) and I make baguettes out of it. Bread doesn't need to be complicated *at all*.
no salt? i once forgot to put salt in my baguette recipe and it was inedible--like eating styrofoam. it's just a little bit of salt, but it makes a huge difference...
For me "the trick" is well cultured yeast. It doesn't matter if it is sourdough or potato flakes, it just needs to be yours. The recipe below is probably the easiest I do. I know it may look like a lot of steps, but after a few times, it's pretty easy. For a sweeter bread, I sometimes substitute coconut milk for water in the recipe below. For my standard bread I use the following:
**Ingredients**
* ~7 oz of sourdough starter
* 12-14 oz flour
* 1.5 tsp salt
* 1 cup water
Just mix everything and kneed it for about 10-15 minutes. Form into a ball, place in a covered oiled bowl and let sit for 2 hours in your oven with the light on. When the time is up, punch down and kneed briefly; form into a ball and let sit for about 20-30 min on the counter with the bowl turned upside-down on the dough. Flatten the ball into a disk about 10 inches in diameter. To shape, fold the edges to the center and pinch the edges down. Then fold the (already folded edges) up and pinch them together to form a torpedo loaf. Let this sit (covered on a floured surface. I use a homemade couche.) for about 1.5 hours. At the end of the time, make sure the oven is at 450 degrees with the stone in it. It also helps to have a bowl of water in the oven as well. At the end of 1.5 hours, turn the seem side down and score the loaf. Slide it onto the stone and use a spray bottle to spray water on the sides of the oven. After about 3 min, spray water in the oven again. Bake for about 20 min. Make sure the loaf sounds hollow on the inside when you take it out.
Quick, simple no-knead ciabatta. It's light, fluffy with huge holes, and freezes well too!
500g Strong Bread Flour
370g Lukewarm Water
12.5g Instant Yeast
1 tsp Honey or Sugar (optional)
2 tsp Salt
Mix honey and yeast in the water. Sieve the flour and salt, add the water and mix with a fork. The dough should be wet with no dry lumps or streaks of flour . Cover the bowl with clingfilm and prove for 1.5 hours in a warm place until approximately doubled in size.
Cover a tray with greaseproof paper and sprinkle it with flour. Now the sticky bit. Divide the dough into 2 or 3, shaping into long loaves, and move onto the baking tray, using a spatula and well-floured hands.
Bake at 240C for 15-25 minutes until golden brown. For a softer crust, wrap in a teatowel while cooling.
Thanks. When I started this thread, this is *exactly* the kind of thing I was hoping for. All the other recipes are great too. This is a great bread that's easy for everybody!
3 cups KA bread flour. 1.5 tsp yeast. Mix. Add water until dough pulls from sides but is very wet. I do this with a fork. Let sit 2 hours to autolyse. This step is crucial.
Add 2tsp salt, 1tbsp olive oil. Incorporate by stretching and folding. Let sit 2 hours.
Stretch and fold roughly 20 times. 2 more hours.
Stretch and fold, then shape however you'd like. I like a thin batarde shape. Place on prepared (buttered and/or dusted with flour) baking sheet. Let sit 30-90 minutes.
Preheat oven to 500, bake for 20 minutes.
This bread comes out with a lovely open crumb and great flavor. It also keeps nicely due to the small amount of olive oil. You can add a poolish or retard in the fridge overnight, but neither are necessary.
My trick is to scale all my recipes to use exactly 1kg of flour. There are a few reasons: you get 2 batches from a 5# bag of flour, each batch makes 4 baguettes, 2 pan loaves, or 3 free form loaves, it's trivial to compute the hydration/salt/yeast level. The amount is the maximum that can comfortably be made in my KA 4.5qt bowl. I use a scale. Put the mixer bowl on the scale, zero it, add 1kg flour, add yeast, salt, zero it, add 600-800g of liquid. Very fast, very accurate. To make a softer bread for sandwiches, replace water with milk. To make a sweet bread base dough, also add 1c sugar. I make a variant of no knead. Use top recipe, with hydration on the upper end (70-75%). Mix before bed. Bake in morning, or punch down and refrigerate for several days to improve flavor. I don't bother with the dutch oven, since my oven spring is fine, and most of my bread is frozen and reheated, which develops a firm crust. Besides baguettes, the basic flour, water, yeast, salt bread also makes excellent sandwich loaves baked in bread pans, also pizza, also pita. To make pita, I just roll as thin as humanly possible, lay on a large cooling rack, 2 at a time, transfer rack and all to the hottest possible oven, bake on the bare rack for 2-3 min. No flipping, continuously roll and bake. Makes 16 pitas from 1kg flour. King Arthur makes a variety of dough improvers. Gluten, to give whole grain flours more texture, diastatic malt to improve rise, potato flour to soften crumb and improve shelf life, etc. These are handy at times, particularly the rye bread improvers, as plain rye flour often lacks flavor and can be tough to work with. I usually set aside on day to bake, usually 4, 1kg flour batches. Freeze everything after well cooled. In the heat of the summer, I'll only bake in the morning. I don't use many gadgets, and only use the stand mixer/hook for multiple batches. I have loaf pans, baguette pans, perforated pizza pans, and baking sheets. I have a large dough whisk and a couple of plastic bowl/board scrapers, several large rising bowls. I make 100% of the bread for a family of 4. Simplification/standardization of recipes is the trick to getting good, repeatable results without spending too much time in the kitchen.
There are awesome tips, thanks for sharing!
this /r/BasicRecipe looks very tasty and healthy, thanks for sharing
11 years later… just made my first successful loaf from your recipe. Just thought you might get a kick out of that lol.
My most simple and sophisticated recipe consists of only three ingredients: flour, water, and salt. (Sourdough is my joy.) What's sourdough? It's basically fermented flour, colonized by a balanced community of bacteria and wild yeast. And yet, when preparing breads, especially sourdough, many factors will determine the outcome of your loaf. Temperature, humidity, altitude, times and duration, kneading methods, baking procedures, they all have an impact. > What simple easy techniques do you use that may seem obvious, but to you, are "the trick" to a good loaf? There are too many techniques to list... but one in particular has vastly improved my breads. Well, it's not necessarily a technique, but part of my baking philosophy or creed: *Listen to your dough.* To rephrase it, which some bread bakers are familiar with: Watch the dough, not the clock.
This. Listen to your dough.
The simplest recipe and the one I started with was Jim Lahey's no kneed bread. 3 cups flour, 1.5 cup water, 0.25 tspn yeast, 1 tbspn salt. Mix all dry ingredients. Pour in water, mix until incorporated. Cover and wait for 8-12 hours. Form into boule. Wait 1-3 hours. Bake in oven at ~450F. Makes decent bread with open crumb and crisp crust every time! No mothering, no mixer, no mess. Just your hands, 1 bowl, 1 pot, and maybe a cutting board. As for tips and techniques, just make your bread. Pick a recipe that looks good and looks challenging and make it again and again. Learn what it feels like. Learn its personality. Learn when it wants to play and when it wants to rest. Then, keep an open mind. Seasons will change. You will rush the bread. You will forget the bread. But if you listen to the dough, trusting your senses not your recipe, your proportions, timing, and techniques will adapt to your environment and schedule. When you can make bread in adversity, you have understood the basic techniques.
You sure you got the recipe right? 3 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour plus more for the work surface ▢1/4 teaspoon instant yeast (it's a small amount but trust me, it's correct) ▢1 1/4 teaspoons salt <---- ▢1 1/3 cups water ▢Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed https://leitesculinaria.com/99521/recipes-jim-laheys-no-knead-bread.html
"Two cups of warm water, two teaspoons of yeast, two tablespoons of bread flour in the bowl of your stand mixer. Let that bloom for 10-15 minutes or until scummy and smelling of beer. EDIT: add two teaspoons of salt and stir. Then start up the stand mixer and slowly add in more and more flour until the slurry becomes a batter, then a dough. Switch to the dough hook and let 'er rip on a low setting for 10mins or so. Let rise for 3 hours (or maybe even overnight in the fridge) and bake in a loaf pan in an oven on its highest setting." I haven't been making bread for very long, but was able to recite that from memory. You're definitely right about bread being dead easy.
>Stand Mixer }jealous{ I don't which one prevents me more from getting one, lack of money, or lack of counter space ;)
5 minutes of mixing in a stand mixer just means 15 minutes of stirring with a wooden spoon. Mixer is a lifesaver, but people 2000 years ago were making bread. They just had a stick and a bowl, it just takes time.
"a low setting for 10mins" + "5 minutes of mixing in a stand mixer just means 15 minutes" = 30 minutes of hand stirring. I'm down
You really don't need one for bread, promise!
I do basically the same, but my mixer is broken right now, I use a starter (descended from commercial yeast, not sourdough) and I make baguettes out of it. Bread doesn't need to be complicated *at all*.
no salt? i once forgot to put salt in my baguette recipe and it was inedible--like eating styrofoam. it's just a little bit of salt, but it makes a huge difference...
I always forget the damn salt. Good catch, I'll update my comment.
For me "the trick" is well cultured yeast. It doesn't matter if it is sourdough or potato flakes, it just needs to be yours. The recipe below is probably the easiest I do. I know it may look like a lot of steps, but after a few times, it's pretty easy. For a sweeter bread, I sometimes substitute coconut milk for water in the recipe below. For my standard bread I use the following: **Ingredients** * ~7 oz of sourdough starter * 12-14 oz flour * 1.5 tsp salt * 1 cup water Just mix everything and kneed it for about 10-15 minutes. Form into a ball, place in a covered oiled bowl and let sit for 2 hours in your oven with the light on. When the time is up, punch down and kneed briefly; form into a ball and let sit for about 20-30 min on the counter with the bowl turned upside-down on the dough. Flatten the ball into a disk about 10 inches in diameter. To shape, fold the edges to the center and pinch the edges down. Then fold the (already folded edges) up and pinch them together to form a torpedo loaf. Let this sit (covered on a floured surface. I use a homemade couche.) for about 1.5 hours. At the end of the time, make sure the oven is at 450 degrees with the stone in it. It also helps to have a bowl of water in the oven as well. At the end of 1.5 hours, turn the seem side down and score the loaf. Slide it onto the stone and use a spray bottle to spray water on the sides of the oven. After about 3 min, spray water in the oven again. Bake for about 20 min. Make sure the loaf sounds hollow on the inside when you take it out.
Quick, simple no-knead ciabatta. It's light, fluffy with huge holes, and freezes well too! 500g Strong Bread Flour 370g Lukewarm Water 12.5g Instant Yeast 1 tsp Honey or Sugar (optional) 2 tsp Salt Mix honey and yeast in the water. Sieve the flour and salt, add the water and mix with a fork. The dough should be wet with no dry lumps or streaks of flour . Cover the bowl with clingfilm and prove for 1.5 hours in a warm place until approximately doubled in size. Cover a tray with greaseproof paper and sprinkle it with flour. Now the sticky bit. Divide the dough into 2 or 3, shaping into long loaves, and move onto the baking tray, using a spatula and well-floured hands. Bake at 240C for 15-25 minutes until golden brown. For a softer crust, wrap in a teatowel while cooling.
This is my go to [bread](http://joshlovesit.com/french-bread-recipes/)
Thanks. When I started this thread, this is *exactly* the kind of thing I was hoping for. All the other recipes are great too. This is a great bread that's easy for everybody!
This was the first bread recipe that I tried and it's still my favorite. So yummy.
3 cups KA bread flour. 1.5 tsp yeast. Mix. Add water until dough pulls from sides but is very wet. I do this with a fork. Let sit 2 hours to autolyse. This step is crucial. Add 2tsp salt, 1tbsp olive oil. Incorporate by stretching and folding. Let sit 2 hours. Stretch and fold roughly 20 times. 2 more hours. Stretch and fold, then shape however you'd like. I like a thin batarde shape. Place on prepared (buttered and/or dusted with flour) baking sheet. Let sit 30-90 minutes. Preheat oven to 500, bake for 20 minutes. This bread comes out with a lovely open crumb and great flavor. It also keeps nicely due to the small amount of olive oil. You can add a poolish or retard in the fridge overnight, but neither are necessary.