The art of bread baking

Before you start

If you just start baking, you will find out that there is no recipe that is perfect. This is because bread is made of natural products for which there are many different qualities. Even different bread baking machines might require slightly different recipes.

So how to go about?

Take a recipe and be very precise in your measurement. Especially in the beginning accurately note down the amounts you weigh for all components. If the result is not what you would like, change only one parameter when baking the next loaf and compare that with your expectations.

With all flour and meal it's good to start a recipe with the general bakers formula (taken from ​https://bakkerijremon.nl/wat-is-een-bakkersformule-en-hoe-kan-ik-het-toepassen/) Compared to the flour/meal in gram:

• 60 % water
• 1 % yeast
• 1.7 % salt
• 8 % fat (oil / butter)

Depending on the quality of the flour, the moist, protein (gluten) and ash content, the amount of water may vary a bit up to a max of 70 %.

You will notice that after a couple of times (probably having had one or more loafs not suitable to give to your guests) the quality of your bread improves and you also start to get a feeling of how to adjust your recipe too adjust the end result to your liking.

Prerequisites

• bread baking machine
  • 
  • the cheap ones are fine in my experience, Panasonic however is somewhat more expensive and believed to be the best for home use.
• a scale with 1 gram precision (preferably electronic)
• measurement spoons
  • 

General method

1. mix all flour and seed components
2. put it on the floor of the baking tin, make sure it's surface is slanted
3. put the dry yeast at the lower part
4. add water and oil on top
5. add the salt on the high, dry end
6. chose the right program for the kind of bread and start the machine.

Recipes

There are currently not many recipes here, hopefully the list will grow once we try out more.

• Flamish whole wheat
• Meergranen broodmix - Aldi