Yeast should make your dough rise, not raise your blood pressure.
One of the most common questions home bakers ask is: “My recipe says fresh yeast, but I’ve got dried yeast, can I still use it?” Or: “The packet says instant yeast, but the recipe tells me to dissolve it in warm sugar water first, what should I do?”
The good news is that most baking yeasts can be swapped, provided ... Read more
One of the questions we are asked most often about home flour mills is also one of the most sensible: can I mill this?
Once you have a domestic stone mill on the worktop, it is tempting to look at every jar in the cupboard as a possible flour. Wheat, rye and spelt are obvious. But what about dried maize? Chickpeas? Buckwheat? Linseed? Coffee beans?
The good news is that home milling gives you ... Read more
This is the basic pizza dough that I use when I want a good thin crust. And to get an extra-crisp base I bake them on a Baking Steel, place on a rack in the oven, and just shovel the pizza onto it with a pizza peel.
Personally, I add a little more water than the recipe uses here to make the dough extra soft and easy to shape and toss, but try this wetter approach later when you’ve got the basic ... Read more
Pizza margherita with long fermented dough
A 22 Hour Pizza dough!
22 hours may seemlike a long time to wait for a pizza but belive us this pizza recipe from Mulino Marino's very own Fulvio Marino is more than worth the wait and it will give you not only a pliable and easy to work with dough but an imessenly tasty pizza.
I like to make the full recipe and freeze some just after they have been ... Read more
What exactly are Mendiants?
Mendiants have quirky roots in France from the Middle Ages. They were part of the Provençal tradition with toppings denoting the original robes of the four Mendicant order of friars. Today they are a well-loved tradition in many a French household and if you try making these they could be a firm favourite in yours. Mendiants are commonly eaten over the Christmas ... Read more
With its caramel coloured crumb and an open bubbly texture, this malted focaccia is relatively easy to make by hand but super-easy with a machine. Here I mixed this in the Ankarsrum Assistent with the dough hook attachment and scraper, but you can mix it by hand in a Swedish stainless steel mixing bowl. The flour used, Mulino Marino's excellent Organic Type "0" Manitoba Flour gives an extra-crisp ... Read more
We're sometimes asked questions about rye flour, for example "what's the difference between dark rye and light rye?", and "is all rye flour wholemeal?". Hopefully we can quickly clear up any confusion you might have about rye flour and how it's sometimes labelled. Thanks to Andrew Wilkinson of Gilchester, and baking guru Dan Lepard for their input.
Like wheat flours, rye can be classified by how ... Read more
You'll find a number of different yeasts available at BakeryBits. Which one should you choose, how are they different from each other, and how should they be used?
Some yeasts are general purpose, while others are selected and cultivated for a particular job - raising an enriched dough such as hot cross bun, panettone, for example, or to allow an industrial bakery to introduce yeast at a specific ... Read more
Emmer (Triticum dicoccum) is an 'ancient grain', native to parts of the Near East, where it formed part of the diet of hunter-gatherers before becoming domesticated by 7000BCE. It arose as a hybrid between a wild variety of einkorn and an annual goatgrass. It was cultivated in Britain by around 2000BCE, but almost universally it was eventually replaced by higher-yielding grain varieties, though it ... Read more
Hot-Cross Bun recipe by artisan baker Aiden Chapman
For Easter, baker Aidan Chapman of the Phoenix Bakery in Weymouth likes to do things properly and his annual two-week stint making 1000s of hot-cross buns is no exception. Here is his recipe for exceptional buns, perfect to make at home, that don't take too long to make.
Makes about 12 buns
Method
For the dough
In a large bowl, add all the ... Read more
