Want to learn how to bake bread? Do it! It is about the cheapest, most enjoyable, most rewarding pastime I can think of.
I can't promise that these lessons will prevent you from making mistakes, because making mistakes is just part of learning (and something I still do all the time). But hopefully they'll give you some good ways of getting started and help you improve your understand of what is happening inside of your loaf.
- Lesson One: Your First Loaf - The place to begin.
- Lesson Two: Putting Something More in Your Loaf - Once you understand the basic principles of bread, you can begin adding new things to your loaf to get different flavors and textures.
- Lesson Three: Time & Temperature - Almost as important as what you put in your loaf is how you treat it while it is fermenting and baking.
- Lesson Four: Glazing - Not as important as what you put in your loaf but still quite important is what you put on your loaf.
- Lesson Five: Ten Tips for Better French Bread - A solid year of baking French Breads hasn't made me great at it, but I've gotten a lot better. Here are some of the tricks I've learned.