Have you ever developed an original recipe? Most people think it is some long drawn out process, but remember you are not Pillsbury test kitchen with thousands of dollars and test kitchen cooks to address ever question or issue.

When you find a recipe that is good, reliable and consistent...that's a keeper. If it is not, you have a couple of choices. Rework the recipe, refine it so it works, put it in the "to-do" pile for a later date or toss it. What you do depends on how much time you want to devote to recipe and only you can answer that question.

As you test, and retest, you will find a pattern to the process and it will fall into an everyday groove. I would suggest that you schedule time each month to test or at least review the recipes you are working on. Remember it's not just about recipes, this is a listing of products you can enter into contest, feature in a magazine or newspaper, include in a future cookbook or sell in your home-based bakery. When your bakery is up and running and a local journalist ask...may we have a recipe to attach to your story? What will you say, no they are all secret...

Always have a dozen or so recipes that are uniquely yours that you don't mind sharing...just in case.

You may also want to place a recipe in your marketing materials...not that people will prepare them necessarily, but to show you are open to sharing your knowledge and skill. You are a great baker and this is not the time to be shy!

Now with that said, you don't have to give out your best recipes, just things you don't mind sharing. Give it some thought.

There is an old saying, there is nothing new under the sun, and it is so true. It is easy to add a new twist to something, but food companies spend millions to create new products, it's a real challenge; but every once and a while an independent culinary innovator comes up with a unique and inspiring food, spice or taste. Take a look at what is missing out there on the grocery shelves... get creative. I would love to see an alternative to buttercream frosting, but I have not yet figured out what it should be, something sweet, creamy and not made with all that fat.

I was inspired by David (dmsnyder) and his 5 hour baguettes. I needed a sandwich bread that was as lean as I could get it but was still very much soft crusted and soft of crumb. I've found it, I think, by slightly modifying the 5 hour baguette idea and adding one enrichment: olive oil.

Stephanie’s Simple Bread
Makes 1 small loaf

225g AP or bread flour
10g rye flour
15g white whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
170g water

Mix ingredients in the bowl for your stand mixer until you form a shaggy mass. Mix, on low, for 5 minutes, then increase speed to medium for 3 or 4 more. I left this in a clean bowl for 75 minutes for a first rise, folding at 25 and 50 minutes, and 60 minutes for a second rise. Shaped carefully and proofed for 40 minutes, scored, and spritzed with water. Baked for 30 minutes at 425 degrees.

I posted the recipe on my blog, too.

So thank you David. Thanks also have to go out to Susan of Wild Yeast for inspiration due to the fact that I was browsing the Wild Yeast Blog when I thought about how good a simple bread would be with the locally homemade ham salad I bought today.

Hi all,

I recently lost my job and am doing a lot of soul-searching for what i might next do. I've been a writing in the healthcare advertising industry since 1988 and love my job, though am also passionate about baking and am wondering if it's time to switch gears. I understand the life to be difficult and not particularly high-paying.

1. Am I correct about these assumptions?
2. What are good/reputable schools in Chicago or central Iowa?
3. What do I need to look for in a school?
4. What do I need to know once I get out of school?
5. For those of you who have gone to school while trying to pay mortgages and so forth: How did you do it (BTW: I have no rich aunt or family)?

Thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

Arlene

There'll be a better write-up on my blog,
mentalexperimental.org, but I wanted to thank Floyd for a good starter recipe. I'm still working on modifying this one. I think that I have the general consistency of the bread down that I want, but I want a bit more tang. I think that there may have to be a sourdough component to really get it where I want it to be. But that's a completely new bread.

This is Floyd's recipe with a few modifications. The first is adding a bit more sour cream. The second was adding cheddar cheese instead of chives. The third is the addition of half & half in the dough and the mashed potatoes.

I think that getting a stand mixer will help me with this type of bread the most. I mixed for 8 or so minutes on speed 2 and then folded twice during the bulk fermentation, giving it an hour at the end to come to full bulk. The crumb is light, fluffy, and very tender.

I'm writing the recipe on the blog now. I wanted to share the photo because I'm so proud of how this one turned out. :)

We need to replace our 10 year old, 30 inch LP gas range.  In may ways it has been a disappointing choice but in particular we have never been able to get as good results with baking muffins and some cakes as we get with a gas range we have in the basement and use principally for cooking overload at holiday times.  It is 55 years old and is the first range we ever bought and is reliable.  We would appreciate suggestions for a good performing range in the hopes that we can avoid another disappointing purchase.

I'm wanting to start working with whole grains more.  I'm going to be working up to the lovely 5 grain that gaaarp posted.

The bread I baked today was thrown together out of need for a sandwich bread for the week that would go well with ham, our choice of lunch meat.  It needed to be relatively soft with a soft crust, as that's my boyfriend's preference, and needed to be slightly sweet to complement the salty ham.  The other thing I wanted was some sort of higher fiber whole grain flour thrown in.

Last night I had to feed my hungry beasties at around 10:30.  I pulled out my discard, fed my 100% starter as normal, and added 1/8 cup water and a little under 1/2 cup flour to the starter.  This produced a very nice, very firm starter, which measured about 166 grams.  I let that sit overnight.  I also measured out 125 grams of my 7 grain flour blend and mixed it with 100 grams of water in the bowl that I was going to make the bread in the next day. I covered that and let it sit overnight as well.

The next morning I was greeted by the sight of a very active firm starter (it had almost grown out of the bowl) and a very nice soaker.  I had set the stages for a very good bread.

We eat a lot of sandwiches so I needed a larger amount of bread.  I added to the starter and the soaker 265g of milk, 355g of flour, 2 tablespoons of butter, and 2 tablespoons of honey.  This made a total of slightly over 1000g total dough.  I kneaded it all together and let it sit for about 45 minutes, at which point I realized I forgot the salt and kneaded in about 2 1/4 teaspoons.  Then I stretched and folded once an hour for...3 hours or so?  The dough was pretty wet and sticky.

I proofed for an hour before putting it in the oven in a makeshift brotform: a wicker basket lined with a floured tea towel.  I put it on my stone in a slightly warm (but not fully preheated) oven for 45-50 minutes.  400 for the first 30, then down to 375 for about 10 minutes.  I left it in the oven after turning it off for about 10 minutes as well.

I pulled this out.

I'm very happy with how things went.  I'm really getting some good results with my sourdough.

Thanks again, gaaarp!

So my sourdough starter isn't ready yet. I've decided I'm going to baby it a little longer with three stirrings a day and lots of love. That being the case, I still needed to bake. This came about because I had oatmeal for lunch today. Strange lunch, I know, but sometimes you just have those cravings that must be heeded. I envisioned this as a soft-crusted bread with a dense but moist crumb and a decently caramelized crust. I wanted a little maple flavor, as well as the flavor of the brown sugar. I almost got it, but I think that this is still a work in progress. Not using instant oatmeal may be a start. It also needs a tad more salt than the teaspoon I put in. The only thing I'm lacking to make it completely from scratch is the maple syrup, which I'll get on friday, and I'll bake it again this weekend from old fashioned oats, brown sugar, and maple syrup. For anyone who still wants the recipe, it is below. I think I'm starting to get the scoring thing. These didn't blow out on the bottom. They were also better proofed than my last loaf. I let them sit for about an hour before baking. The real test of any bread making, for me anyway, is the appearance of the crumb. This is, by far, my best for a more dense loaf. I'm really loving what I'm learning here. I'm having a lot of fun baking (sometimes more than my boyfriend, our daughter, and I can eat, but it's proving to be very educational. Recipe: Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal Bread - Take One Prepare the oatmeal: 1 packet instant maple & brown sugar oatmeal 1/2 cup water Mix and heat for 1 minute. It will be almost done, but not quite. Allow to cool to just warm. Assemble the rest of your ingredients: 3 1/3 cups flour 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast 2 tablespoons of butter 1/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar (very lightly) 1 egg, lightly beaten 2/3 cup milk (lukewarm) 1 1/2 tsp salt Disolve the yeast in the milk. In your large bowl you use for mixing the final dough, mix together the oatmeal, sugar, and egg. Once incorporated, mix in the milk. Once all this is well mixed, add 2 cups of flour and the salt and mix until you get a thick paste. Add the rest of the flour in 1/3 cup increments until it's almost all in. If your cups are the same as my cups, it should take all but the littlest bit of the flour. If not, you want the dough to feel very sticky and barely hand-kneadable. Once mixed together so that there's barely any flour left in the bowl, rest for 10 minutes. After the resting period, turn the dough out onto your kneading surface and "knead", as well as you can, for a few minutes. 5 or so. Bulk ferment should be about 60-80 minutes. Mine was on the longer side because of the temperature of my kitchen. I stretched and folded the dough three times during this time. Got very good gluten development. Preshape and allow to sit for 5 or so minutes. Shape loaves, then proof for about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the warmth of your kitchen. Score and bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes, then turn down to 350 and bake until a thermometer reads 200 degrees or so.

This morning, I bicyled down to the Corvallis Winter Market (which is a lot of fun -- it's amazing what local farmers harvest here during thw winter -- greens of all sorts, leeks, potatoes, onions, squashes, spinach, sunchokes, beets, turnips, fresh eggs, stew hens ... it's fun), and I saw a booth with Kiko Denzer's books, among other things, for sale. Kiko's book, Build Your Own Earth Oven is a guide to building a cheap and easy wood fired oven out of cob. In fact, he's built his entire home from cob.

I asked the woman behind the table whether Kiko was teaching any classes, and she said, "Well, you can ask him. That's him behind you!" And so it was!

He's a very nice man, quiet, with the look of a college professor. He had an oven on display that was about the size of a small shipping box. He said it's big enough to bake in, though it's difficult to get the fire really roiling inside, due to the small size. But he got me thinking, "No need to build a big oven. I could just build a small earth oven, big enough for a pizza and a couple of loaves.

So, maybe I will. Anyway, it was fun meeting someone I'd admired from afar for quite some time.

Hi all,

I wanted to draw everyone's attention to an author of excellent bread making books. I have baked for a while but only over the last 7 months has it really become a passion for me. The major inspiration was a book called 'Dough' by Richard Bertinet. He is a professional baker who now lives in Bath in England where he runs a baking school. The author is French and was trained to be a baker in Paris. What sets this book apart for me is the layout, as a beginner certain books were very intimidating to look at... not this one. The book is broken down into 4 sections regarding 4 different types of dough. The really cool thing was the kneading technique that he teaches you (via the book and the included short DVD), this is a technique used in France, I tried it and my bread was so much lighter and airy. This was such an approachable and easy book to use. After 7 months of studying this book I have now bought the sequel "Crust", which goes into more complex breads, such as making sour dough with your own yeast culture. Again this is accompanied by a short DVD, I find this a great help, as written instructions in baking books are not always explicit in the eyes of a beginner.

I bring this book to the attention of the website as I recently moved to the US from England, where I had heard a good deal about the author, however he seems to have slipped under the radar over here. These two books have brought me along leaps and bounds.

Has anyone  else used/enjoyed these books?

Ben

Hey there,
These are some of my observations regarding baking times and temperatures as related to different products.  Please feel free to add your own observations as these are based on my own equipment, ingredients, and techniques.

These are convection oven temperatures, so in a standard oven, I would add 25 degrees to each.  I'll be referencing the photo below and referring to both tables above.

Here are four types of bread that were cooked in the oven at the same temperature at the same time: (top left) Rustic White, (top right) Kalamata, (bottom left) Sour Rye, (bottom right) Multigrain.  All 12 ounce loaves were cooked for 22 minutes, all 24 ounce loaves were cooked for 35 minutes except the Rye (33 minutes).  All were misted before they went in (the Rye had an egg wash) and steamed when they went in the oven. 
As you can see from the picture and the color table, most of the coloring came in the first 22 minutes.  However on both of the top loaves there was a 'browning' that occured in the final 10 minutes that created a crispness and cracking in the loaves that didn't occur in the 12 ounce loaves.  Since I was baking a variety of loaves with low volume, I decided to compromise and end up with (in my eyes) perfect loaves and pretty good 12 ounce loaves, in order that I could 'save oven space' and minimize the time I had to fuss with the bread.  If I were to want smaller loaves with a similar crust and structure, I'd need to jack up the temperature to speed up the coloring timetable.  Keep in mind, it would still progress in the same fashion, just speeded up. If I wanted to, I could cook all of the rolls or small loaves at once at a higher temperature, cook the small stuff on the top rack of the oven to give them more color...
These are all work-arounds to get what I want, but in this case the easiest was what I did which happened to be a compromise that probably only I will notice.
Hope that answers some questions, but if it opens up some new ones, feel free to ask.
-Mark