Bread bakers, please share your thoughts and feelings.

[journeymom]

Do you bake a lot of bread? Do you supply all the breads for your family?

Do you consider yourself a beginner, an intermediate or above average baker?

What are your favorite, most helpful, most inspiring bread baking books?

What do you like to bake? For example, sandwich loafs, sandwich rolls, dinner rolls, chewy sour dough, Friday night challah, sweet breads, crackers, bread sticks, pita, whatever else you can think of.

What's one really important thing you have learned so far in your baking journey?

[lil_earthmomma]

Do you bake a lot of bread? Do you supply all the breads for your family?

Yes, and yes.

Do you consider yourself a beginner, an intermediate or above average baker?

Intermediate baker in general, beginner bread baker.

What are your favorite, most helpful, most inspiring bread baking books?

I don't have any book recs, but my most helpful most inspiring bread baking resource is www.breadtopia.com

They have video tutorials where you can actually see how to make the bread, and the no knead bread is so delicious.

What do you like to bake? For example, sandwich loafs, sandwich rolls, dinner rolls, chewy sour dough, Friday night challah, sweet breads, crackers, bread sticks, pita, whatever else you can think of.

I make sourdough (made the starter! Learned from breadtopia!) and no knead bread every couple of days so that we always have fresh bread. Both are lovely for sandwiches, but are definitely rustic artisan bread. I like artisan bread for sandwiches though. I make sweet breads (banana, pumpkin etc.) whenever fancy strikes, butter pan buns or sourdough rolls for soups and dinners. Hamburger and hotdog buns, graham crackers.

Next week I'm going to try some pita.


I LOVE LOVE LOVE sourdough pancakes. They aren't sour, just flavorful and fluffy and so great.

What's one really important thing you have learned so far in your baking journey?

Even when your creation seems like a flop, you can do something with it. Really dense loaf? make croutons! Burnt? Cut the burnt part off and hollow it out a bit and make a yummy breakfast/lunch/dinner filling and bake that inside the remainder of the loaf. Or rip it up and make some spinach dip or other such dip. In other words, don't feel bad, you'll get it!

I also learned from my grandmother that if your dough falls (rises too long and deflates) you can knead it a bit and let it rise again.

Happy bread baking!!! Your family is going to love it! :

[katiesk]

My dp bakes all of our bread. He has a great sourdough starter that he uses and makes whole wheat loaves. He is a beginner at all of this but with above average results! He also frequently makes sourdough pancakes.

We sometimes make things like pitas or tortillas, croutons, rolls whatever. We don't eat a ton of bread things though. He usually bakes one loaf (sometimes two) a week.

[425lisamarie]

I've always made all our breads though lately i'm finding it a chore. I love anything from Peter Reinhardt and find he really is in the roots of baking. I started bagging frozen pizza balls making an extra loaf for the freezer sometimes because i just tire of always making bread. Especially since we all like different kinds LOL!

I'm going to buy a hotdog bun pan though, because i just want same shaped things that I don't have to worry about a baking stone with

[mamadelbosque]

I've made quick breads & muffins for years, and don't know if I've ever bought them... I've recently started baking my own sandwhich bread, which I think turns out pretty darn good (I make the basic whole wheat from Laurels Bread Book), and would really like to figure out a good english muffin/breakfast roll type recipe, as well as bagels & tortilla recipe - I love my family's recipe, but the tortillas come out really thick and definetly not bendible like for tacos or burritos.

[journeymom]

Originally Posted by mamadelbosque

I love my family's recipe, but the tortillas come out really thick and definetly not bendible like for tacos or burritos.

So are they for eating on the side? You don't use them to wrap up foods? My mouth is watering!

OK, sour dough pancakes have been mentioned multiple times now. I'm going to have to investigate.

Lil Earthmama, that web site looks great!

Please, I want to hear more from bread bakers!

[laura-belle]

I wouldn't say that I bake a lot of bread--we don't eat very much bread. I bake all of our whole wheat bread as well as quick breads, pizza, cinnamon bread, etc. The major category that I don't bake is sourdough--I have had trouble getting the crust to turn out ok, perhaps due to the oven being not hot enough. I consider myself an intermediate baker but I'm better with sweet things than with bread.

Most of my recipes are handed down from my mom or grandmother and most of the rest are found on the net somewhere. I do like the concepts in the 5 min a day book, but for whole wheat, the actual recipe they provide isn't great. The most important thing I've learned is that baking bread isn't actually very difficult and that experimenting pays off .

[mamadelbosque]

Yeah, I usually make them when I make green or red chili, and use them to sop up the extra... they're especially good paired with red chili & pinto beans!! They're way thicker than typical tortillas (like 1/2-1cm thick), and oh soo yummy...

And I do also make pizza dough, pancakes & waffles... I guess I just don't think of those things as 'bread' though

[paxye]

Do you bake a lot of bread? Do you supply all the breads for your family?

Yes and yes

Do you consider yourself a beginner, an intermediate or above average baker?

Intermediate... I am always learning...

What are your favorite, most helpful, most inspiring bread baking books?

I have the Bread Bible but I have to admit that I don't use it much... I did make the Ciabatta bread from it tonight though...

What do you like to bake?

every week I make our everyday bread... 5 loaves of whole grain bread that is great for toast, sandwiches and grilled cheeses etc... I have finally figured out the right water ratio so that it makes the light and fluffy bread that DH and the kids love.

I also make my tortillas, sourdough bread, hamburger/hot dog buns, pitas, foccacia, rolls, pizza dough, cinnamon rolls etc...

What's one really important thing you have learned so far in your baking journey?

Experiment... many of the recipes that I have used don't have enough water... I am starting to really figure out what the dough should feel like to get the crumb that I want....

My weekly bread is my own recipe and it just gets better each time I make it...

[lil_earthmomma]

Originally Posted by mamadelbosque

I've made quick breads & muffins for years, and don't know if I've ever bought them... I've recently started baking my own sandwhich bread, which I think turns out pretty darn good (I make the basic whole wheat from Laurels Bread Book), and would really like to figure out a good english muffin/breakfast roll type recipe, as well as bagels & tortilla recipe - I love my family's recipe, but the tortillas come out really thick and definetly not bendible like for tacos or burritos.

Here's my fave bagel recipe .

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/05/ci...raisin-bagels/

[journeymom]

My weekly bread is my own recipe and it just gets better each time I make it...

Now THAT'S inspiring!

After I posted here I went to the library checked out Artisan Baking Across America and The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I've heard good things about both.

[paxye]

Originally Posted by journeymom

My weekly bread is my own recipe and it just gets better each time I make it...

Now THAT'S inspiring!

I have never been a big recipe follower in the past so it was easy for me to stray... lol... and when I realized that bread was just mostly different measures of flour, water, yeast, sugar and salt it was pretty easy to go from there...

now that I have a mixer I feel like it is easier to get the results I want also...

[Llyra]

Originally Posted by journeymom

Do you bake a lot of bread? Do you supply all the breads for your family?

Do you consider yourself a beginner, an intermediate or above average baker?

What are your favorite, most helpful, most inspiring bread baking books?

What do you like to bake? For example, sandwich loafs, sandwich rolls, dinner rolls, chewy sour dough, Friday night challah, sweet breads, crackers, bread sticks, pita, whatever else you can think of.

What's one really important thing you have learned so far in your baking journey?

I bake a few times a week, usually. I can't eat the bread myself, but they all enjoy it so much, and I enjoy making it. They do eat some other bread, but we're not big bread-eating people in general, so I probably supply about 3/4 of what they eat, bread-wise. I think of myself as an intermediate baker.

I make sandwich bread, both white and whole grain. I make foccacia, pitas, breadsticks, whole grain cottage loaves, and a few other kinds of flatbreads. I also make a great pizza dough.

The most important thing I've learned is how to experiment-- that I don't need to follow a recipe, because it's really hard to screw up bread if your ingredients are high-quality. You might not get what you imagined, but you'll certainly get something that tastes good.

[Faliciagayle]

Do you bake a lot of bread? Do you supply all the breads for your family?

Yes. For the latter it depends on the week, if I have time/have planned ahead, etc. I hate buying bread.

Do you consider yourself a beginner, an intermediate or above average baker?

Intermediate bread baker, above average sweets baker.

What are your favorite, most helpful, most inspiring bread baking books?

Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day (changed my life!!!)

What do you like to bake? For example, sandwich loafs, sandwich rolls, dinner rolls, chewy sour dough, Friday night challah, sweet breads, crackers, bread sticks, pita, whatever else you can think of.

Challah, free form boules, whole wheat sandwhich bread, corn bread, muffins, brownies. I want to try naan and pita, but I always forget until I'm serving the curry or whatever... and by then it's too late to get the fermentation going.

What's one really important thing you have learned so far in your baking journey?

Since I can't think of just one:
A stand mixer is a life saver. I always need more flour than called for. Slightly under baking is the key to a moist challah. Baking with steam produces crackling crusts on boules. Homemade bread crumbs are far superior to the chemical laden alternatives at the grocery store. If you use yeast, buy it in the vacuum sealed brick. It saves a LOT of money.

[journeymom]

Just wanted to say THANK YOU to the inspiring posts here. I'm investigating the books and links.

By the way, I love Smitten Kitchen's blog. I got the best recipes for ratatouille and red velvet cake there.