If you're going to bake bread, read this!
This will make you a bread baker.
If you are already a bread baker, this will make you better.
I don't know exactly, but I think my mother started teaching me to bake bread when I was ten, maybe earlier. (I got my first cookbook when I was eight.) She wasn't making bread; she was growing a child. --Dennis
- Use the best bread flour you can find with 11% or more protein. Don't use all-purpose flour.
- Knead the bread until it is elastic. Your dough hook is the easy way to do it. You should be able to stretch the dough into a thin band.
- Cover it with plastic and let it rise until it is nearly doubled.
- Form your loaf or rolls, cover them and let them rise until the dough is soft and puffy and full of gas.
- Bake a loaf for about 25 minutes (and rolls for about 16 minutes) and until the internal temperature reaches 195 degrees. (Stick the probe of your thermometer to the center of the loaf.)
