10 Bread Baking Tips From Pro Bakers - part 1

These are the 10 most important tips I learned in my interviews from some of the best current bread bakers. Each of the interviews have been around 1.5 hours each and I condensed them down into a much shorter more digestible format for you. Most of the tips are for sourdough bread but also work for yeast based doughs.

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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:04 No more sticky dough
2:20 The best temperature for baking
5:15 Mastering the fermentation process
9:02 Using Ice Cubes for steam
10:22 Influencing your sourdough flavor
11:04 Blisters on your bread
13:25 The perfect sourdough starter
17:09 Making your starter more active
19:20 Mastering stretch and folds
20:30 The role of temperature

#bread #sourdough

[alanhirschman]

This was a monumental work, and extremely informative. One of the problems of getting most of our information from You Tube is sifting through the chaff of long-winded videos that promise a lot and deliver very little. It seems that your scientific curiosity makes you very suited to these analyses, and using expert opinions increases the value of the video. Condensing the hours of video that you viewed is a tremendous service to your viewers and especially to your subscribers. Please continue to produce content like this. Thank you for your time and knowledge.

[menace]

From my experiments, I found that the longer the bread is covered, the thicker the crust gets. For my sourdough bread, the optimal length of time to leave it covered is 16 minutes. That's when I reduce the temperature and remove the cover and continue baking for as long as it needs (usually for another 34 minutes). The result is a thin, crispy crust.

[sheamarshman]

Yes please! More of these! I love how you sort of debunk myths and make it clear that sourdough is not about following some perfect formula. You give me so much confidence to experiment! 😃😎

[mayyabie]

Great summary on important points. We want more videos like this one :)

[tl_]

Really like this format! It's hard to commit to the full interviews, but this lets me get the main info from all of them, and decide on who I'd like to hear all the way thorugh.

[nathanbenton]

this is reassuring and motivating in the sense that NO ONE has all the answers.

[anandsood]

Excellent information provided about sourdough. Thank you so much. Need more such videos

[Fedelia]

Love it - great for all of us who can’t or don’t want to watch the full interviews, but still want the essential tips!

[Nizaura]

Summary videos are great although please don't stop posting full interviews. It always nice to watch the full thing when there is time.

[vaazig]

This takes a lot of effort, but it seems like a lot of people appreciate it. I prefer the long interviews as I listen to them while doing other things such as walking the dog

[hormz]

Great job Hendrick, very useful video 👏👏👏👍🙏

[maureenperez]

I like hearing from multiple successful bakers like these artisans. My only "wish" is that these pros could demonstrate what they are saying with a small piece of dough so struggling sourdough hobbyists like me can better understand with my EYES...rather than my ears. I need to see the process in action, and I do love your tutorials. Again...visual cues are extremely helpful. I also agree with a commenter below that Jim does appear to be intuitive when he makes bread. I have little "intuition." I liked what Jim had to say, but putting it into action, is harder.

Starters are making me frustrated, and no matter what I do, what flour I use, they either take forever to "start", or maybe collapse without me seeing it...with no active bubbles. I've tried Whole Wheat, Spelt, Bread Flour, All Purpose, on multiple attempts and even White Whole wheat Flour, as a hybrid idea one time. I bought an expensive large crock to hold and feed the starter. Is that a problem? I keep my starter in the fridge and refresh it once a week if I don't bake. I "attempt" a bake twice a week with crummy results.

I live in California in the USA. Our weather here right now on every single day is hot, then cold, AC on, AC off, in oven with light on or off, or on the counter in 85F conditions while trying to activate the starter. Still crappy starter is what I get, with not much rise. White flour starter sluggish. Wholegrain starter sluggish. Last night I made a wholewheat refresh of my starter to make sandwich bread today. I put it in a cold microwave, then the cold oven to try to stop the temperature fluctuations overnight. I autolysed the dough like you showed us in that video, woke up this morning, 10 hrs after to add starter and salt to the dough, and found non-active starter.

I added more ww flour and equal water and stirred it and put it back in the now cold oven with the light on. I checked it three hours later, today. Crock was warm so I turned off the light and left it in the oven. Still no activity. I use the "float test, " and it floats for an instant, then sinks to the bottom of the water.

When I first started sourdough baking a couple of years ago with EINKORN FLOUR, my starters were very active and bubbly. Never had a problem with that starter. My problem with that idea was the lower gluten EINKORN FLOUR, which is extremely expensive and great for some people with Type Two Diabetes...like my husband has. But...the shaping has always been a problem for me and that flour was super sticky and difficult to work with. SO I STOPPED AND THREW OUT MY STARTER AND SHOVED MY BANNETONS INTO A CABINET. I can watch a million videos and mimic the shaping I see... with ZERO success. WHAT IS MY

[ludmilashprits]

Amazing and super helpful video! Thanks Hendrick 👍🏻😊

[citadine]

This was an extremely helpful video, answering many questions I had, especially such as how to get a less acidic/sour starter and bread.

[JesterMad]

I'd say it's at this moment best video to take knowledge at your channel. Please, more! There is so much science in it!

[jorgenicolasmiranda]

nice kind of video summarizing a little bit of everything

[karenb]

This video has connected dots for me as a beginner sourdough baker. More like this would be so helpful. Thank you.

[tonys-travels-]

Fabulous really informative video. Perhaps the best I’ve seen on sour dough. More please. Great work, well done.

[doncressco]

Really a strong foundational video. Appreciate your efforts and present all this to us the lay folks. Danke dir.

[stevewakefield]

Really appreciate your tips. These summary from interviews is really interesting! Enjoy your videos, keep up the great work!!