Dough Craft: Bread Tip #1

Hot tip: Buy the book Flour Water Salt Yeast (FWSY) by Ken Forkish. Get the hardcover… unless you want your Kindle to be covered in flour, water, salt and yeast. Flipping back and forth between pages happens a lot. Get the the real book.

I love FWSY because it brings a well thought-out, methodical approach to baking good bread. Really good bread. The kind people oooh-and-awww at. The kind you smile at yourself for when you take a bite.

It covers all the basics. The tools, the process, the techniques. The recipes are ordered from simplest to most complex. Want to build your own levain (sour dough starter)? It’s in here. Want to try whole-wheat variations? Of course!

Ken writes about the back story of his journey to bread making. He’s an excellent writer, and you find yourself enjoying his story-telling just as much as the recipes and instruction. Don’t skip those parts, it helps you understand bread and the effort it takes from someone who is clearly passionate about it.

Be prepared

Fair warning: if you buy the book don’t be expecting to crank out loaves the day the book arrives. You see, good bread takes time. It also requires the right tools. Yes, you can likely make due with what you have around the house, but having the right equipment helps immensely. It also costs money though — gadzooks! $30 book… and then much more in equipment!

What tools? Well plastic tubs, scales (yah, I have two), proofing baskets, thermometer, dutch oven(s)—never mind the bread ingredients! The full list—well it’s in the book. You can get stuff on Amazon (you’ll see a lot of the items under the Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought section on the book’s Amazon page) or check 0ut a kitchen supply store. They’ll have most, if not all of the items there. The trickiest I’ve found are sourcing the proofing baskets. Again, Amazon has them (though, no longer under Prime—boo!), and Golda’s Kitchen has them too. I do find I like the Masterproofing brand I got from Amazon better.

One tool not recommended in the book is a large sized Roul’Pat which helps to prevent dough sticking to your counter tops (if you have laminate like me). But regardless of that it helps immensely with cleanup.

It takes time

The shortest bread recipe is a Saturday bread. You decide (early enough in the morning) to make bread for dinner that night. The time required for the rest of the recipes increases from there. It takes time. The hands-on time isn’t necessarily a huge time suck—though it can be when you’re just getting the hang of things—but the time you have to pre-heat the oven, fold the dough, etc. You need to commit to the bread and will have to time your errands for the day(s) accordingly. Simply, you need to schedule around it. I set lots of reminders on my phone to keep on top of things.

Follow the directions

Ken goes through pain-staking detail of how to master the techniques he uses. Appreciate that. And follow the directions. I’ve been practicing for several months now and I can say I’ve gotten the hang of most it, and I can find areas I can save time. But earlier on it was a challenge to keep all the steps straight and the timing right. Don’t rush the learning process.

OMG Pizza!

Right! Pizza!! How could I forget? The book outlines how to use the same recipes to make ah-mazing homemade pizzas.

Ken’ has followed up FWSY with the book The Elements of Pizza. I also highly recommend it, but the recipes in FWSY are awesome and a great starting point to making jaw-dropping homemade pizza. It also gives instruction on how to make your dough dual-purpose… using half for bread, the other half for pizzas.