I put a ton of time into baking bread and I want each bake to be my best yet. And, when it isn’t any better than the last bake or even any better than the bread I was baking last summer, it can be frustrating. Till a few months ago, I assumed that because you get to bake a lot in a commercial bakery (compared to a baking at home), you just get better over time. I no longer think that’s really the case.
In response to each week’s results I make tweaks to my formulas or process for the next bake. Week over week, one tweak can lead to another, and you can find yourself in a knot.
Sometimes I step back and think — damn, the bread I was baking 3 months ago was head and shoulders above the last 4-5 weeks of bakes. You try to reset back to old formulas and get back to the prior best results / tossing out tweaks in the flour mix or your recent experiments using a younger levain in the mix for example. But, it’s not that easy to do if you don’t manage the development process.
I want some basic t…
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