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A community of bakers interested in naturally risen breads.

A community of bakers interested in naturally risen breads.
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The Bread Bakers Guild of America BakeryBits - Artisan Bread Baking Equipment Measurements-Conversions Click below for measurements and conversions: All conversions in the charts below are approximate and most have been rounded up or down to the nearest whole number for easy measuring. Equivalent Measures U.S. Standard Measure and Metric Conversion The following chart is a guide for converting standard US measurements to metric measurements. Fahrenheit and Centigrade (Celsius) Conversion The following chart is a guide for converting from Fahrenheit to Centigrade. Convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade (Celsius) Subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit reading, multiply by 5, and then divide by 9 to find the Centigrade reading.For example: 160o F – 32 = 128; 128 × 5 = 640; 640 ÷ 9 = 71.11o C; round down to 70o C. for the >oven setting. Convert Centigrade (Celsius) to Fahrenheit Multiply the Centigrade reading by 9, divide by 5, and then add 32 to find the Fahrenheit reading.For example: 70o C × 9 = 630; 630 ÷ 5 = 126; 126 + 32 = 158o F; round up to 160o F for the >oven setting.

Science of Bread: Bread Science 101 From Chinese baozi to Armenian lavash, bread comes in thousands of forms. What do they have in common? On the most basic level, they all involve cooking a mixture of milled grains and water. Imagine a continuum of breads, ranging from the thinnest flatbreads to the fluffiest brioche. Some are amazingly simple: Matzoh, for example, is nothing more than flour and water, baked until crisp. Raised breads, on the other hand, involve the complex interactions between flour and the leaveners that give them their porous, tender quality. Leaveners come in two main forms: baking powder or soda and yeast. Baking powder or baking soda work quickly, relying on chemical reactions between acidic and alkaline compounds to produce the carbon dioxide necessary to inflate dough or batter (more on this later). Yeast, on the other hand, is a live, single-celled fungus. But leavening agents would just be bubbling brews without something to contain them. For more about bread science, check out these links!

Bread Making Videos — Bread Baking Instructional Videos and Baking Supplies. Percent hydration of pizza dough tjkoko, The answer to your question depends mostly on the type or style of pizza that you want to make. If you look at the matter of pizza dough hydration from 30,000 feet, the range of hydration values you will see can run from the mid-thirties percent to close to 100%. For example, a NY style dough formulation typically has a hydration value of from about 58% to about 65% (see An American style dough formulation, such as represented by a Papa John's or Domino's type of dough, can have a hydration of around 56-60%. A Chicago deep-dish dough has a similar interplay between hydration and oil but the oil can typically range from about 8% to well over 20%. A Neapolitan dough formulation, especially one using 00 flour, can have a hydration value of around 55-60%. A Sicilian style dough formulation can have a hydration that can range from the mid-sixties percent to over 80%. Peter

Basic Sourdough Starter Recipe In addition to flour, water, and yeast, your starter also contains bacteria. When these bacteria feed on the sugars in flour, they produce acidic by-products. This is what gives sourdough its sour taste. Actually, all doughs contain at least some bacteria. Sourdoughs and other raised breads also differ from one another because of the eating habits of the yeasts that make them rise. Pizza Dough | Italian Pizza Dough | Authentic Pizza Dough Authentic Vera Pizza Napoletana Dough Recipe Ingredients By Volume 4 cups Molino Caputo Tipo 00 flour 1 ½ cups, plus 2 TBL water 2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp dry active yeast By Weight 500gr Molino Caputo Tipo 00 flour 325gr water (65% hydration) 10gr salt 3gr active dry yeast We highly recommend cooking by weight. Mix the dough in a stand mixer, by hand or in a bread machine. Cover the dough and let it rise for 1 1/2 - 2 hours, or until double. To make your pizza balls, shape each piece of dough into a ball. Your pizza balls will need to rest for about an hour to become soft and elastic, so that they can be easily stretched into a thin crust pizza. If you won't need your dough for more than an hour, refrigerate it until you are ready to start. If you won't have an hour to let your dough rest, read our Dough in a Hurry strategy. Additional Resources Make Vera Pizza Napoletana at home. Try our authentic (and easy) pizza sauce recipe. Download our free eBooks—Wood-Fired Pizza and Pizza Stone Pizza.

Baking Glossary Bakers throw around a lot of terms and often don't define them. As I use jargon I'll try to start recording it here for the sake of building up a reference. ABAA: Artisan Baking Across America, by Maggie Glezer. A book featuring profiles of artisan bakers and recipes for some of their breads. autolyse: a technique for improving gluten development without heavy kneading. Baker’s percentage:a convention for listing the ingredients in a dough in which the quantity of each ingredient is expressed a percentage of the total amount of flour. BBA: The Bread Baker's Apprentice, a book by Peter Reinhart. Banneton: a woven basket, sometimes lined with linen, used to hold a shaped loaf while it is proofing. Batard: a loaf that has an oval or oblong shape. Biga: a term used variously as a very stiff (~50% hydration preferment), or as a generic term for preferment. Boule: a round loaf (French for "ball"). Brotform: a coiled cane basket used to hold a shaped loaf while it is proofing. KAF: King Arthur Four.

Baking Sourdough Bread with a Stiff Starter | the perfect loaf Baking in the winter always presents problems here at my house: it’s cold! Probably not quite the cold you get in other parts of the world but it sure is cold to me, and my starter. Kitchen temperatures are consistently hovering between 68º and 70ºF which really inhibits yeast and bacteria activity. I’ll typically offset this by changing the percentage of mature starter carryover or by heating up the water used in my feedings, but you really want to try to keep your starter around 75º to 80ºF — this is not easy to do when winter is bombarding your area. You just have to make do with the warmest spot you can find in your kitchen, for me this is next to my whisky collection… almost poetic. A short aside… In the winter with all the holiday events and cold weather I find myself baking pies and cakes more and more. Note that frequent starter refreshments will always lead to a lower acidic level (less sour taste) whether you’re working with a stiff or liquid starter. Liquid Starter Update: Crust

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