All my loaves so far (except Loaf 1 – Beer Batter Bread and Loaf 32 – Irish Soda Breads) have been simple flour + water + yeast + salt + maybe things like grains or nuts or eggs. I haven’t yet made any enriched bread. Enriched breads typically have milk and sugar added to...

Not every loaf of bread I bake now has a specific learning purpose, and that’s great. I feel like I’ve already accomplished what I wanted to learn with this project, which is to understand bread well enough that I can “whip up a batch” whenever we want it. That was the...

I haven’t yet mastered how long to proof my breads before baking, so I decided to do a test to understand what happens when a loaf is over-proofed. The results from this experiment weren’t at all what I expected. But before the punchline, here’s some background information....

My Mom’s birthday was coming up and I wanted to show up with bread in hand for her and my sister. I hadn’t made Reinhart’s French bread since Loaves 11 and 14. I had a few minor issues with those, but I’ve learned so much since then that it seemed pretty easy now (and...

We got together with Sarah’s family and decided to take bread as a gift. I’m confident with Reinhart’s lean bread recipe now, so that was a given; but I acquired some new bannetons to try out my shaping skills with. The one I have been using at home is for much bigger loaves...

The lean bread recipe from Reinhart is now my favorite bread. In this batch I used instant yeast rather than active dry, and it made a real flavor difference – the smell and flavor of the yeast was definitely there adding a nice layer to the experience. My shaping this time was better...

With all my new knowledge I felt like it was time to take another pass at Reinhart’s Lean Bread recipe – the one I used in Loaf 16 that made me mad at bread. Success! (Mostly.) Between then and now I’ve learned a lot about measuring ingredients, and I discovered that I...

For the most part I feel that I have ciabatta down pretty well. This is the fourth time I’ve made it and it’s reliably good – which isn’t to say I did everything right each time. These loaves were made for friends visiting for the weekend, and they were great. I still...