July 31, 2012 - 10:28am
Hello!
Consider me an inexperienced baker from Canada. Hello to all!
Can I ask general question about baking bread here, or is there a more appropriate forum for that? I have yet to browse all the forums, but I figured I'd ask so I'd be certain.
-obax
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Welcome!
You can post a general question most anywhere. We're pretty laid back. :)
Best,
Floyd
Cool, thanks! Laid back is a-ok in my books, and I have to say, I already dove in and asked a question. I'm looking forward to trying all sorts of new things now that I've discovered this place!
-obax
After many years of reading this forum on a nearly daily basis, and after 40 years of baking at home, I've noticed that, while you can get lots of advice on this forum, you, as a newbie, will not be able to judge good advice from bad. While everyone writing in here is very well intentioned, unless you've lots of prior experience, you will not know who to trust.
If your goal is to learn how to bake bread, my suggestion is this: pick an recognized expert to learn from, study that person's lessons, and practice a lot. The easiest way to do this is to work from a bread text book, not from a bread recipe book (usually called a cook book.) Texts are good because they do something that recipe books/cook books do not do. Texts take you from ignorance on up as high as the text goes. They often have exercises to practice from. I have used a particular text to teach from and, based on my experience, it's good for beginners. I think you should buy and study from DiMuzio's Bread Baking. It's inexpensive, has decent enough illustrations, and has lots of useful exercises. Another excellent text, Hamelman's Bread, is great but not for a beginner.
Floyd Mann's The Fresh Loaf, which you can download from this website, is also quite good.