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King Arthur Flour Company's test baker's tips for baking bread
Rate it! Votes (2) | Comments (0) By Maris Callahan Posted September 9th, 2010

While cakes, cookies, and pies tend to dominate our ovens during the early autumn weeks, baking yeast bread is actually easier than most people think.

“I bake almost all of my bread from scratch,” said Jacqueline Church, freelance writer and author of Leather District Gourmet. “It’s cheaper, tastes better, and I enjoy the process. You don’t even need a fancy bread machine or mixer if you can knead by hand.”

There are plenty of bakers like Church who fear no yeast but, if you’re a novice baker or interested in taking the plunge to yeast breads, Suzanne Reid, test baker at New England’s King Arthur Flour Company provided four of her top tips that you knead to get started.

Read, read, read

Whenever you bake or cook, read the entire recipe through before you begin. When you’re baking yeast bread, some recipes require your dough to rest, or proof, in between steps and it is important to plan accordingly. 

Yeast dough will wait for you

If an unexpected event pulls you from the kitchen, you can slow down any yeast dough recipe by putting it in the refrigerator before the first or second rise. You can buy yourself at least two hours (and maybe even overnight) this way.

Parchment paper is your friend

Whether you’re baking a free-form loaf of bread on a cookie sheet, or preparing a pan for fresh cinnamon rolls, you might be tempted to skip this step. Well, whatever you do, don’t! You may not have needed it, but you'll never be sorry you took that step to line your baking pan before use. It will lend to easy clean up and you can even be eco conscious – use it more than once.

Scrape, scrape, scrape

Yeast dough can be sticky, so keep a spatula on hand to loosen rogue bits of dough from the side or bottom of your bowl. If you’re using an electric mixer this isn’t always necessary, but recipes typically neglect to include this important step.

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