(photo by Mark Luinenburg) Some of our blog readers have noticed that we have lots of summertime posts and discussions on outdoor-grilled pizza and even desserts, and pastries, but we’ve never posted on baking pizza the old-fashioned way. As summer comes upon us, believe me, there’ll be more and more that we do outside on […]
On Mondays, it’s my turn to pick up my older daughter from school, and then stop for tea and treats before her guitar lesson. We’ve been doing this for six years, and I think I love the tradition as much as she does. Our downtown coffee shop has great coffee and tea, but the baked goods leave […]
So many people have asked about baking dough inside a closed cast-iron pan (see a post on that). The cast-iron pan method is based on a much older method, where bread is baked inside a closed clay pot (or “cloche,” meaning “bell” in French). Both methods depend on trapped steam from the dough to create […]
Here is yet another way to get a fabulous crust on your bread without using any steam in the oven. An unsophisticated disposable lasagna pan is an option but here’s another idea. Baking bread in a Dutch oven is a very old idea. All the iron-pot methods are based on the old European technique of […]
Well, we had over 90 responses, and they fell into four categories: 1. Buy yourself a “Kaiser Stamp,” which imprints the tops of round rolls with the Kaiser pattern. 2. “Klopping,” the traditional method of folding and pressing (“klopping” refers to the karate-chop like action to make the seal). Very difficult to achieve with our […]
OK, I’m pretty happy with this photo, but… well, they aren’t really Kaiser Rolls. I was on a “roll” from last week (sorry), when I thought my Brotchen were more than passable. So I wanted to re-create another German roll style– the famous 5-petal Kaiser roll. I have to say that even though the picture […]
Many people have been writing to ask for German-style hard rolls. The most common are Brotchen (little breads). They’re made from egg white-enriched white dough, and brushed with more egg white before baking at high temperature with steam. In the book, I concentrated on French-style crust techniques, which tend not to use egg white for […]
(photo by Mark Luinenburg) Pita bread is a simple, unadorned flatbread that dates back to antiquity. You simply roll out your favorite non-enriched dough as thin as possible and bake it on a hot stone. There is no resting time or other ingredients to prepare, so you can have it in a matter of moments. […]
For what ever reason some ovens just don’t trap steam very well. This is true of professional equipment, but some home ovens behave this was as well. The reason to care…if you don’t trap steam in the oven for the first 10 minutes of baking you will end up with a dull, lackluster crust, even […]
In case some of you have missed the memo, it is BYOB year! Bake Your Own Bread!! There are several food bloggers whose New Year’s Resolution is to bake all the bread they need and never buy a single loaf (see below for info!). This includes artisan boules, sandwich breads, sticky buns and even English […]