What I've Learned In Three Years Of Making Bread

I know this is not the normal content that I share on here, but baking and cooking are things that I do a lot and (for the most part) really enjoy, so you may see more posts in the future about this kind of things. Bread baking has certainly been a journey and I'm still learning (sourdough, I'm looking at you), but getting to where I am now motivates me to keep going with the process.

This is probably not going to be one of my most popular posts and that's okay, but for those who are interested, I hope you find it helpful!

Like a lot of people, I used all the time I had to spend at home in 2020 to start learning how to make bread. It did NOT go well at first but because there were always some parts that were edible, I kept at it and today I want to share with you some of the things I've learned.

Problem #1 - Raw in the middle, cooked on the outside.
For the longest time I had bread that looked perfectly cooked on the outside after the proper amount of time, but when I cut it open, it was still doughy and raw in the middle. I was SO frustrated by this and we finally decided that it might be the pans I was using. We had some thin aluminum pans that may or may not have been designed for bread, I don't know. But after we got some ceramic pans, I don't think I've had this problem again! I love my KOOV pans!

Solution: Use proper pans.

Problem #2 - Bread falls apart in spirals.
When my bread did cook all the way through, the slices would come apart in spirals like a cinnamon roll when you ate them. I had been following a recipe that had me roll up the loaf before putting it in the pan and, for some reason, it wasn't binding to itself as it baked. I still don't know why that was happening (or not happening), but my solution was to just kind of work the dough with my hands into and oval and then put it into the pan.

Solution: Stop rolling up the loaf.

Problem #3 - Sticks to the pan even after greasing.
One of the most frustrating things is when you have a beautiful loaf that has chunks ripped out of it because it stuck to the pan! I don't use non-stick pans for health reasons but I would grease the heck out of my pans and would still have problems. I don't remember how I came upon the idea to use butter but now I rub butter wrappers all over the pan and then also spray them with oil and my bread slides out every time.

(We leave our butter sticks on the counter to soften and this leaves a little more butter on the wrapper than if you unwrap a cold stick).

Solution: Use more grease.

Problem #4 - Rising.
I'm combining here. For a time I had issues where, after letting the bread rise in the pan, it would grow even bigger in the over during baking. I had these monster loaves that were spilling out of their pans. Not ideal. My solution there was to not let it rise as much as I wanted and let it finish rising in the oven. This worked well for loaves made with white flour. It even worked pretty well with loaves that were about 80/20 white and wheat flour. But when I started using white and white wheat, my loaves stopped rising as much. They don't rise in the oven at all and they take a lot longer to rise to a reasonable size in the pan. I don't know the science as to why this is happening but the lesson is that the flour you use matters.

Solution: Pay attention to your flour.

Problem #5- Forming the loaf after the first rise.
The bread I make has me making the dough, letting it rise, and then forming the loaves before putting them into the pans for a second rise. You're supposed to put the dough into a "lightly greased bowl" for the first rise. The problem is, if it's "lightly greased" then it sticks to the bowl and it's hard to get out. So I use more grease and then my bread won't stick to itself because there is so much oil on it! What I've started doing recently is to spray the bowl with oil and then throw a bit of flour in there and move the bowl so that the flour coats all the oil. My dough sticks a little bit more than it does with just the oil but it's so much easier to form loaves now!

Solution: Use oil and flour in the rising bowl.

I have finally gotten to a point where I can consistently make good loaves of bread but I'm still learning. My next challenge to conquer is sourdough bread. It's proving to be a formidable challenger at that.

Are you a bread maker or wanting to get into it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on homemade bread!




Photo by Jovan Vasiljević on Unsplash