How To

Bread Tin or Dutch Oven: Which Should You Bake In?
Two ways to bake a loaf Most home bakers end up in one of two camps: bread baked in a tin, the rectangular pan that produces uniform sandwich slices, or bread baked in a heavy lidded pot, which produces the round, crusty artisan-style loaf. Neither is wrong. They're built for different breads, and knowing what each one actually does makes the choice easy. What a bread tin does well A tin's job is containment. It holds soft, often enriched doughs in a fixed rectangular shape while they rise and bake,... Read more...
How to Use a Proofing Basket (and Why Your Bread Needs One)
What a proofing basket actually does A proofing basket, also called a banneton, is the woven or wood-pulp basket that shaped dough rests in during its final rise. It looks like a decorative accessory. It isn't. It solves a real physical problem: soft, well-hydrated dough can't hold its own shape for an hour on a flat counter. Left alone, it slowly relaxes outward into a puddle, and a loaf that spreads before baking will spread in the oven too. The basket's curved walls support the dough from every side while... Read more...
Baking Bread in a Dutch Oven: Why a Pot Beats Your Oven
The problem with home ovens Walk into any bakery and the bread comes out with a crust you can hear: deep brown, blistered, crackling as it cools. Try the same recipe in a home oven on a baking sheet and you get something paler, flatter, and softer. The recipe isn't the problem. The oven is. Professional bread ovens do two things a domestic oven can't: they radiate intense heat from thick stone or steel surfaces, and they inject steam during the first minutes of the bake. Baking inside a heavy... Read more...
How to Bake Bread at Home: A Complete Beginner's Guide
Bread is four ingredients Flour, water, salt, and yeast. Everything else, from seeds to spelt to sourdough starters, is a variation on those four. That's worth internalising before your first bake, because it means bread doesn't fail for mysterious reasons. When a loaf goes wrong, it's almost always one of a small number of things: the dough was too dry or too wet, it didn't get enough time to rise, or the oven wasn't hot enough. All of those are fixable. This guide walks through the five stages every bread... Read more...
Smash Burger Basics
Smash Burger Basics
What's in your smash burger set A smash burger lives or dies on heat and contact, and every piece in this set is built around that idea. Before your first... Read more...
Bread Glossary
Bread Glossary
Why these words matter Every recipe in this guide uses a handful of terms that describe specific stages of bread making. They're not jargon for its own sake: each one... Read more...
How to Use Your Tools
How to Use Your Tools
Nine tools, one job Every piece in your set exists to solve a specific problem in the bread-making process. None of them are decorative. Once you understand what each one... Read more...
Baking Technique
Baking Technique
The four steps, and why each one matters Baking bread in a Dutch oven comes down to four steps: preheat, score, bake covered, bake uncovered. It looks simple written out... Read more...
Dutch Oven Cleaning
Dutch Oven Cleaning
Right after baking Cleaning a Dutch oven takes less effort than most people expect, as long as you do it while the pot is still warm, before anything has a... Read more...
Cast Iron Basics
Cast Iron Basics
What cast iron actually is Cast iron is exactly what the name says: iron that has been melted and poured into a mould, a process called casting. No stamping, no... Read more...
How to Season Cast Iron?
How to Season Cast Iron?
What seasoning actually is Seasoning is the protective layer that makes cast iron naturally non-stick and resistant to rust. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with herbs or... Read more...