Intro

anything worth knowing about bread can be found here!  I am always amazed about what you can find here concerning bread stuff.  Welcome and happy baking!

anything worth knowing about bread can be found here!  I am always amazed about what you can find here concerning bread stuff.  Welcome and happy baking!

Learning to bake bread is a wonderful thing.  There are lots of ways to do it.  While you can do it by reading this website all the time, and certainly over time you'd learn a lot, the fact is that you cannot, as a newbie, know who's giving you the best advice.  The only thing you can be sure of, in my many years of experience reading The Fresh Loaf, is that the largest majority of the people who write are extremely well intended and of good humor.

If you want to learn more quickly than by picking up ideas from the website, I have this suggestion:  attach yourself to an expert.  That can be done in at least a couple of ways, whether by finding a local teacher or by working your way through a text book.  If you learn well by reading, here are two books you can choose from:  DiMuzio's Bread Baking and Hamelman's Bread.  If you take the time to read either you will quickly learn from their authors information that is accurate.  The two books are quite different.  The DiMuzio text is easier for a beginner.  I wish I'd had it when I started over 40 years ago.  The Hamelman text is extraordinarily thorough, much more than I would have found useful when I began.  Both are available used on line.  You might try finding them in your local library before you spend any money.

I also recommend the lessons available on this website, the videos on this website, and asking for a mentor in your local area, again, on this website.

Once you're making loaves, post questions and pictures on this website to see what people say, but never forget that your textbooks is written by a true expert.

And practice a lot.  It's so much fun!