Make Bread

A bread blog for home bakers

nick

How to Make a Sourdough Starter From Scratch: Day 1

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To a home baker, there’s no better feeling than pulling a beautiful artisan crusty bread out of the oven that was made with a homemade sourdough starter. The sense of accomplishment and pride is just amazing, and I love sharing those loaves with family and friends.




While everyone is awed by the loaf and your skills, you know that it really wasn’t all that hard. And maybe that’s the best part!

That’s why I want to show you how to create a sourdough culture from scratch, how to grow it and feed it, so you can have your very own homemade sourdough starter. It only takes a few days to get it going and the results will last you a lifetime. You can even share it, give it to your friends, and teach them a new hobby!

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7 Best Bread Pictures of 2016

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As 2016 came to a close, the online bread community baked a lot of amazing things.  From yeasted to sourdough, flat to puffy, the world is filled with talented bakers.  Check out our pics for the 7 best bread pictures of 2016 and get inspired!




Homemade Blue Corn Tortillas
These aren’t your average homemade corn tortillas! They are scratch made with home grown blue corn! Top that!

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How to make good bread? Practice!

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make bread at home

As this year starts to wind down, I wanted to share with you a quick picture to encourage you to keep baking and never stop experimenting!

Not all of my bakes are home runs, not all of them are delicious, and certainly not all of them are blog worthy!  I probably experiment with my baking more than most and the picture above proves it.

Here are a few of my key takeaways for this year:

  • Keep a baking journal.  I started doing this last year to keep track of my bakes, especially if I’m trying out a new formula or using new ingredients.  This can be on your phone/tablet, or a text document on your computer, or even the old fashioned spiral bound notebook.  Whatever it is, use it!  It helps you look back after a bake and critique yourself.  Should you have let the dough proof longer?  Note it!  Should you have used less yeast? More water? More salt? Note it down and try again with your new ideas!
  • Pay attention to the temperature.  After you’re done mixing your dough, take a probe thermometer and note down the final dough temperature (FDT).  Next time you bake, use colder water and see that it will take longer for the dough to proof.  Then the time after that, use warmer water to see that the dough proofs faster.  Find a temperature that fits your schedule and run with it.
  • Preheat your oven.  I usually time my bakes so that I’m loading the loaves in the oven after the kids have gone to bed and I’ve had a chance to finish up my to-do’s.  This ends up being around 9pm.  Sometimes I get a late start and it’s tempting to put the bread in the oven before it’s fully ready.  This compromises the final product and all the effort you put in to making the bread.  Always preheat your oven and make sure things are good and stable!  If your oven is drafty like mine, use a dutch oven or a le cloche to provide a more stable environment for the bread.
  • Have fun!  By far the biggest reason why I bake is because I think it’s so fun to just make something so delicious at home.  Next time you’ve loaded your loaves in the oven, wait 10 minutes and step outside for 5 minutes.  Come back in your house and smell that delicious bakery smell right in your own home.  You’ll be amazed, surprised, and even encouraged to keep at it.  Get dirty, make bread, and have fun!

Holiday Gift Guide 2016

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As we race towards the holiday season, we’ve put together our first annual holiday gift shopping guide for the baker in your life. This curated list of baking related gift ideas are sure to hit a home run with the baker in your life. The best part is that you may reap the benefits of these baking gifts in the form of edible treats throughout the year!

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Hedley & Bennet apron, $75

Because every baker needs a nice apron, this one is 100% cotton and has ample pockets for tools and gadgets. It is washable, durable, and stands up to the messiest chefs!


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Kitchent Aid Tilt-Head Stand Mixer, $280

An essential arsenal in every baker’s tool kit is the mighty stand mixer. This tilt-head mixer from KitchenAid is powerfull enough to knead tough doughs and gentle enough to whip the fluffiest of meringues. With a 5-Qt. stainless steel bowl , it offers enough capacity to mix dough for 9 dozen cookies or 4 loaves of bread in a single batch.


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Emile Henry Bread Kit – Cloche, Banneton, and Lame, $160

As you’ve read here on this site, I’m a huge fan of the Emile Henry bread cloche. In our opinion, it is the best bread cloche you can buy. It’s ceramic properties provide even heating for your entire loaf and the fact that it is lightweight make it easy to load in to and, most importantly, out of your oven. This kit is awesome because it comes with a 8 inch round proofing basket and a lame, just about everything you need to make bakery quality, artisan bread at home.

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Uuni 2s Portable Pizza Oven, $230

The Uuni has been a favorite pizza oven here for about a year. It heats up to over 700˚F and bakes Neapolitan style pizzas in your backyard in about 2 minutes. We’ve had a lot of success using this portable pizza oven and think that your pizza loving friend will rock out some amazing pies too!


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EXO Super Peel, $60

Loading and unloading fragile items in to a hot oven can often times be stressful (even dangerous)! The Super Peel from EXO eliminates a lot of the hassle by providing a mechanism where the food just delicately slides off the peel and on to your cooking surface. No stress, no burns, and serious yums!


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Our Favorite Bread Baking Books

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Tartine Bread Book, Chad Robertson, $25

A must have book for anyone aspiring to become a better baker by learning how to start, grow, maintain, and evolve their own sourdough culture. Robertson shares his baking background and teaches you how to make amazing breads at home using a dutch over or Cloche.

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Flour Water Salt Yeast (FWSY), Ken Forkish, $20

This book is aimed at folks who are just taking off in their baking life. With this book you can make the bread on the cover on your first go and the results will look and taste just as good!

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Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, Jeffrey Hamelman, $30

Hamelman’s book is a more advanced book for bakers. Hamelman is the head baker at King Arthur flour and to me, this gives him serious street cred. This is one of my favorite books and I refer to it often as it offers a fairly technical background on how bread baking works and it also provides easy to follow formulas for the home baker to try.

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Thank you all so much for making this year great, and here’s to a better 2017!

Faux Sourdough

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faux sourdough bread

We love hosting dinner parties. Having friends over to cap a busy week, letting the kids run wild, and enjoying these relaxing times are sometimes the highlights of our busy weeks. One of the things that help the evening to stand out is the amazing food that’s brought to the table, especially the bread.

My friends know that I love to bake and enjoy coming over to nibble on fresh homemade bread, and I’ve recently been working on perfecting a super easy yeasted sourdough like bread that I call “faux sourdough”.  With just a few hours and six simple ingredients, this bread is a crowd pleaser from start to finish.  It comes out of the oven with a golden crispy crust, has a slightly sweet aroma, and a flavor that you can make as sour as you please.

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No Knead Bread

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Check out this short video for a brief overview on making no-knead bread.

As you can see, it’s really easy!  Mix the ingredients and let them hang out overnight.  Whenever you’re ready, pre-heat the dutch oven or cloche, load the bread, and bake away.




No-Knead Artisan Bread at Home

No-knead bread is a good way to make bread. It gives you a nice crust, decent flavor, and a good looking end product! This will get you on your way to artisan breads at home with minimal fuss.