It’s early June and I’ve completed 50 of my 100 loaves of bread, so here’s the Halftime Recap of the game so far. I’m happy with my progress – I thought I’d be farther along in the varieties of breads that I’ve baked, but I’m much more confident with my skills than I thought I’d be...

My recipes have all called for Instant Dry yeast, and warned that if you used Active Dry yeast instead you should up the amount by about 25%. My SFBI class instructor also added that Active Dry yeast has quite a few dead yeast cells in it, and they sluff off other things (I forget what) that...

When is 1 tsp. not one teaspoon? When it’s salt. I’ve quickly become a convert in using weights (and metric weights in particular!) for measuring ingredients. This was reinforced in my first week when I learned that one cup of flour could have a weight variance of 25 to 50%,...

As the first step in my new Scientific Method for Learning How to Bake Great Bread (there is no acronym for this), I’m comparing the three flours that I’ve been using – Whole Foods Organic, King Arthur, and Gold Medal. I made three versions of 1/3 size batches of the French...