This article summarizes the findings of three test bakes with desem (Belgian style sourdough starter) and my conventional sourdough starter and one test bake with desem versus my conventional starter after seven months of it being fed and maintained the same as the desem. At the end of the article, you’ll find a summary of both cultivation and maintenance methods.

In this experiment we explore the characteristics of sprouted flour with some real-world baking. We made two NY Deli Rye Breads, one with regular rye flour and one with sprouted rye flour and compared their fermentation speed, oven spring, crumb, and flavor.

Ever notice that you seem to get a more open crumb with smaller loaves? In this series of experiments, we made large batches of dough and then divided them into differently sized and shaped loaves while otherwise striving to treat them as close to identically as we could to see how these size and shaping differences affect the resulting crumb.

Here we compare Kamut®, khorasan, and durum wheats for taste and performance differences in bread baking. The quick summary is that there seemed to be more terroir difference than species difference in the loaf appearance, and taste testers didn’t have consistent opinions about the flavors of all three breads. Some found durum more buttery, others found khorasan and Kamut more buttery. Same with sweetness.

This is a guide to baking bread without special, dedicated equipment, whether you’re a new bread baker who isn’t sure yet if you want to commit to the hobby, or an experienced baker who wants to bake bread in another kitchen–when visiting friends and family or staying in an vacation rental. This article is intended to help you make tasty, attractive bread with tools that are in most any kitchen.

When baking bread that calls for enriched dough (additions like eggs, milk, sugar), sourdough leavening (as opposed to commercial / instant yeast) can often result in a lack of desired crust browning (AKA “the Maillard reaction”) leaving you with a pale bread that looks bland and underbaked. In this post we go over reasons for this and provide a solution in the form of a sweet, stiff levain that gives results much closer to yeast alone.

Breadtopia’s bread flour has no additives but some bread flours have diastatic barley malt powder added. This increases enzymatic activity in the dough, which can result in faster fermentation, moister crumb, crust with more color, and better oven spring. We did a simple experiment comparing with and without diastatic barley malt powder to assess the difference it makes.

The mash process is traditional in the bread baking of countries where rye is a dominant grain such as, but not limited to, Russia, Finland, and Germany. Combined with sourdough leavening it brings out complex and delicious flavors in whatever grain or spice additions you choose, and the bread texture is wonderfully soft, moist, and resistant to staling.

Scalding is a technique involving cooking a portion of the flour for a bread dough with relatively high hydration at a specific temperature which creates a gelatinized starch which can hold a lot more water than a normal bread dough mix. It also induces chemical reactions that create a sweeter flavor and make the bread more easily digestible.

Baking bread successfully with lower-gluten, heritage and ancient grains usually requires some adjustments to your process and ingredients. This post details how to achieve an open crumb and good oven spring with these more challenging grains.