Bonnie Ohara - Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads

Copyright 2018 Rockridge Press, Emeryville, California

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Designer: Christopher T. Fong

Editor: Pippa White

Production Editor: Erum Khan

Photography Paige Green, 2018

Food Stylist: Alysia Andriola

ISBN: Print 978-1-64152-119-2 | eBook 978-1-64152-120-8

This book is dedicated to my dear friend Jennifer Kara.

She was the first person who asked me to teach her about making bread, some five years ago. The sourdough starter I shared with her that day still lives in her kitchen, and she continues to bake for others and her family, a small ripple that made me feel that I could teach someone else what I have taught myself. She was my first regular subscriber, and she endlessly encouraged others to patronize my business, many of whom are now my friends. I will always be grateful for her encouragement and support.

Contents

On most Saturdays at a quarter to noon, you will find me pulling out the last batch of baguettes from the hearth oven in the tiny kitchen of our little 1920s bungalow. A full day-and-nights labor comes to fruition; loaves in shades of sienna, mahogany, and deep gold glimmer in the sunlight. They are piled high on the kitchen table, on the built-in shelves, on the worktable, on the antique bakers tableevery surface available. I pry open the old windows to let out the steam that has built up in the house, and as the scent of fresh baked bread wafts out the window, a line of customers begins to form at my front door, trailing out through the picket fence and down the street. While they wait, kids play cards, color with crayons, and look at picture books at the picnic tables. They play tag, running around in the wildflowers and clovers. Neighbors and friends swap stories as the line grows, and I wrap up baguettes and loaves, labeling each one carefully. Within an hour or two, all of the loaves have gone to new homes in our community. It always gives me a special feeling when I finally rest after a long day, imagining all those loaves of bread ending up becoming part of a nice meal. I picture the baguettes on a cheese plate shared with friends, taken on picnics, going into lunchboxes, stuffed into backpacks on long hikes and adventures, nibbled on by babies tiny teeth, or shared with extended family on holidays. Its still the same feeling I had the first time I shared a loaf I had made with my family or a friend.

Baking bread to share with others is the most elemental and nourishing connection we can create with those we love: our family, our children, and our neighborhood. As dreamy as that seems, my bread journey began for much more practical reasonssimply that we didnt have enough money for food, and I knew that the only way to stretch our budget would be if I started making more of our essentials from scratch. I borrowed some bread-baking books from the library, invested in a 25-pound bag of flour, and started trying to teach myself to bake for my family. Those first loaves were not beautiful, but the kids and I would sit on the floor next to the warmth of the oven and watch as the bread baked. Then they would tear a loaf apart while it was still warm, the steam rising in front of their joyous faces. They didnt care that my loaves werent perfect, only that we had something to share. Each loaf that I made was only marginally better than the previous one, but each small amount of improvement continued to feed my hopes that I could make a better loaf of breadone I could be proud of. I continued biking to the library, kids in tow, to check out more and more baking books, and slowly, as I absorbed knowledge, practiced, and learned through trial and error, I became completely obsessed. My scrappy loaves began to shape up into something wonderful. I kept notebooks full of scribblings about the times, temperatures, weather, and anything else I could think of that might affect my process. Over time, I began to make bread that was reliably good, and I began to share it with people outside of my family. More and more friends began asking to be added to the the bread list, a notebook where I would write down their names. My list started out with four names on it, but through word of mouth I quickly found myself with a list of 64 names. I began to realize it was time to turn what had been a simple attempt to feed my family into a tiny business. Some eight years after those very first loaves, I have a thriving, tiny cottage bakery with hundreds of regular customers and a wonderful communityand even enough money to go grocery shopping.