Dough above 75 percent hydration are very sticky. Bread Illustrated suggests a mixer for these dough so you can stay “hands off” until the kneading of the dough hook turns it into something more manageable. If you don’t have a mixer with a dough hook, or like ours the dough hook just makes a mess, […]
Baking
Bread Illustrated, my pick for top breadmaking cookbook

This past month I was deep in the early learning phases of making yeasted bread and I came across this great book, Bread Illustrated by America’s Test Kitchen. After looking through dozens of cookbooks, it was exactly what I was looking for. I was struggling to understand the timing of everything: When making a bread, […]
Home baking Japanese shokupan (white bread)

In Japan they have this really fluffy, Wonderbread-style loaf that they call shokupan. It’s basically freshly baked white bread except more exotic because the recipe is from Japan. I’ve been into baking lately so I decided to make my own. When I was starting out I used a recipe from Ethan Chlebowski and another from […]