Expert Advice

What Size Proofing Basket or Banneton Do I Need?   Short answer: the proofing basket or banneton weight is the dough weight - all the ingredients including the flour and the water added together.   We show all our proofing baskets or bannetons with a weight in the name, for example, our popular 1kg / 2.2lb Round Cane Banneton or Proofing Basket. What does this weight mean? It gives ... Read more

Having blisters on your crispy crust on your bread that cracks when you squeeze it is so satisfying you'll just want to slice it up and devour the whole lot. I have tried a few different methods and found that there are a few simple tips that will help you obtain a nice crackly crust.   Create tension in your dough with the final shaping before placing it into your banneton or baking tin... Read more

A Guide To Our Specialist Sugars Using specialist ingredients can set your bakes apart and make your job easier. Knowing exactly which specific ingredient you want is something we want to help you with, so we have compiled a list of our specialist sugars together their uses, to help you choose the right sized sugar that you need. You can also find related recipes below and in each product listing... Read more

Welcome to my BakeryBits Christmas 2023 gift guide. Whether you are looking for fabulous festive gifts to get your star baker yearning to switch on the oven or are after pocket-friendly perfect parcels as stocking fillers, I have compiled two lists to inspire you or your gift giver this year selected from our range. I've been a keen home baker for decades and have spent 20 years working in the ... Read more

You’ve got the right flour, spent time mixing it, shaped it correctly, and the rise looks good, then you try slashing the loaf with a knife and it drags and looks ugly. Well, we’re here to help you avoid that and finish your loaf as well as you started it. BakeryBits was the first UK company to offer French dough slashing blades for sale in the UK to the  public, and since then ... Read more

We're all familiar with recipes that specify flour, water, starter etc in grams, ounces, cups or spoons. But what if you want to make the recipe a little - or a lot - larger? Doubling a recipe using mental arithmetic is usually easy enough, but can still lead to annoying mistakes (at least, in my experience!). However, increasing the original recipe by a more complicated amount, such as 3.75 times... Read more

If you want holes in your bread then there are quite a few factors that affect how you exaggerate and enlarge them. So at BakeryBits we hope this discussion of the factors involved will help get you on the right track. But it's also fun and interesting when you get into it. You will see that many of these points conflict, so that’s where you have to decide what is more important to you. Do ... Read more

"The branded Panibois boxes really help to carry our strong brand across to our customers. They also make portion control easy, and show off the focaccia at its best advantage."Peter Cook Baker & Founder Peter Cooks Bread  Worcester, England  Images courtesy Peter Cooks Bread You can have your Panibois cases customised with your logo for an additional 3p per case. There are a ... Read more

What is fortification? It’s when vitamins and/or minerals are added to foods in order to enhance or “fortify” the flour and give it heightened nutritional and health benefits. So what is flour fortification in the UK? Currently all milled white and brown non-wholemeal wheat flour manufactured and sold in the UK has calcium, iron, thiamine and niacin added. This practice began ... Read more

BakeryBits is the UK's leading online stockist of couche linen. Many of you have bought it already and we’re very happy that you like it so much. But there will be some of you who have no idea what it is, how it can improve your bread baking, and why so many bakers consider it essential. So here is a guide to buying and caring for your couche linen cloths.   Check out our full couche ... Read more

Welcome to our BakeryBits Christmas 2022 gift guide. It's a different world today and we know you need both luxury gifts that will amaze you and your loved ones, as well as small treats that are fun and inexpensive. So start with our Tantalising Top 10: gifts for any baker guide, or scroll down below that for our Top 10 for a Tenner (or under) guide.A Tantalising Top 10: gifts for any ... Read more

Using BakeryBits decorative sugars What are they? Not all white sugar is the same. You’re probably familiar with different brown and unrefined sugars, the coarse demerara sugar crystals and “coffee” sugar (even larger brown sugar crystals). But did you know that the same is true for white sugar? At BakeryBits we do a range of different white sugars especially made for baking, with ... Read more

Fuel Saving Baking: 9 tips to help reduce fuel costs We hear you! You have these great skills, you're baking terrific breads, you have a good oven and our amazing flours, everything you need… and now you need to watch your fuel bill. What do you do? At BakeryBits, we’ve been wondering: what would fuel-smarter baking be like?  So here’s our BakeryBits guide to reducing fuel costs! 1... Read more

What is… strong flour. I guess by the name strong flour has strength, but what does that mean? If a particular flour contains high-quality protein that in tests produce a elastic, resilient dough, then it’s correct to describe it as strong flour. In the USA the more straightforward term “bread flour" is used, and baking bread is what strong flour should be good for, or wherever... Read more

Ok, so plain flour in the UK is "cake and pastry flour", am I right? Maybe. Or not. The thing is, it’s not a specific thing, and that makes it hard to categorise. Bread flour – called strong flour in the UK – is generally assumed to have good levels of gluten, probably something around 11-14% protein, and score pretty well on strength and resilience tests;  however plain ... Read more

So I’ve read that 00 Italian flour is the best for bread and pizza, is that true? Forse sì, forse no. That’s Italian for maybe yes, maybe no. With that phrase alone you can go a long way in Italy, and get into some very tricky situations. See, the thing is those zero numbers have nothing to do with the doughmaking characteristics of the flour, but really only tell how finely it... Read more

Confused about these numbers in the names of many French flours: from T45 up to T150?  Then find out here just what the French T-system for grading flour is all about.Choose the flour that’s right for what you want to bake…ideal for baguettes:Matthews French T55 Belle BlancA great general-purpose baguette flour, with excellent elasticity and stretch with low stickiness. The wheat... Read more

What is a sourdough starter? A sourdough starter is a slow-rising mixture of flour and water, containing both yeast and bacteria, that together produce gas bubbles, a sour flavour, and a bright acidic aroma. Using it gives the bread a distinctive flavour, an irregular aeration, and a slightly waxy appearance to the crumb. The yeast and bacteria contained in the sourdough starter mostly come from... Read more