Basic Baking 1

This is the first in a series of posts describing the basic techniques of bread making. A number of people who read this blog are new to baking and find things like kneading, especially as described in books, difficult to get to grips with. Well, the purpose of this site is to explain how easy it is to make great bread in your own home, so this series of videos focusses on basic techniques.

The main difference between breads, other than exotic ingredients, is the type of dough that is prepared. These can be divided into, for example, Stiff, Medium, Moist and Wet. Each is prepared slightly differently and considerable time and effort can be saved by knowing a little about each one.

The first we shall deal with here is the Stiff Dough. This is characterised by the use of around half as much water as flour as can be found in this recipe. Although used primarily for pizza dough, it also produces relatively long-lasting loaves and rolls with an even crumb (meaning the air holes inside are of a similar and generally small size). It is one of the doughs that requires tough kneading and this is demonstrated (at length!) in the video, along with other techniques such as forming loaves and oiling film, which will be useful in any bread preparation.



Apologies for the sound quality.

Be boisterous bakers.

Baking Broadcast

Due to my studies and social life I have left this blog idle for a while, however all that is about to change as I embrace the multi-media opportunities of this blog format. I have made a video of me making my favourite bread of all, pizza. Hopefully this will add some sense and techniques to the rather sparse recipe available for download and become a regular fixture of this site.



My next post, which I am working on as we speak, will be the most simple to make bread imaginable. This will be to encourage all those non-bakers who have been logging on recently to get out there and bake, so watch this space. I also hope to provide baking video tutorials on kneading, shaping and the all important overnight technique.

Till then, be a baker.