Introduction, A Good Bake

Introduction

When I first started working as a baker, I had a dreamy idea that I would be shaping and baking long elegant loaves of bread. But I was actually tasked with recording the pH of all the bread dough in the bakery. I would walk around the bakery, pH stick in hand, and diligently measure each tub of dough. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I first thought of being a baker.

I am a career changer; before I became an expert on bread, sticky buns, and croissants, I was a chemical engineer. That experience is what sets me apart as a baker, and what sets this book apart from others. As a chemical engineer, I was trained to apply the principles that I learned in science to things that occur in real life, like baking, even if that’s not where I ever imagined I’d end up taking that degree.

My early training is so deeply ingrained that using the scientific method has become as natural and involuntary as breathing. I use it on a daily basis. It probably sounds very complicated, as if I have test tubes and Bunsen burners in my kitchen. It’s not. It’s really just a way of thinking about process and organizing your ideas. What it comes down to is this: you have a theory about how something works, and you then test out your theory, like you might a formula for brownies. In chemical engineering, we call that theory a hypothesis; in cooking, we call it a recipe.

Without scaring anyone off and telling you that baking is a science (ah, but it is), let me give you an example: When I was working on my pie dough recipe, I would bake the dough and it would shrink in the oven, and the lattice would be crooked and uneven. Sure, it would taste good, but I wanted the pie to look perfect. So, I would ask myself: Why is the dough shrinking? What is happening to make it shrink? Does it have to do with the formation of gluten in the dough? Is it shrinking because of the water in the dough? I would think about the possibilities, change different things, and then observe the results. Among my experiments, I tried reducing the amount of water in the dough and noticed that my crust didn’t shrink so much in the oven. My hypothesis was that reducing water in the dough and letting it rest before baking reduces the shrinkage in your crust. I tested it out and observed. What I proved is that my recipe had the desired effect, which is to say, I confirmed my theory that excess water in pie dough causes shrinkage.

Asking questions—lots of them—is integral to being an engineer: a chemical engineer or an engineer of dough. You are always asking, Why is this happening? What are the causes? How do time, temperature, heat, and mechanical movement (such as mixing a batter) affect the outcome of a baked good? I was taught to ask those questions, then develop hypotheses and test them. Curiosity allows you to ask more questions and develop better hypotheses. Passion makes you more persistent. It’s all of these things—my science degree, my curiosity, and my love of baking—that have marked my culinary career and helped me become proficient in so many different areas of pastry and bread work. They’ve also prepared me to write this cookbook—to develop and outline recipes more thoroughly and clearly, so I can teach people at home to do what I taught myself. I learned to take the principles from cookbooks and in culinary school and apply them to baking in order to better the result, whether it’s a straightforward muffin or a complex babka.

I have been baking professionally for the last fifteen years, but long before I ever stepped foot in a professional kitchen (or in a science lab), I wanted to write a cookbook. I started baking as a child, making cookies and muffins at home in central Pennsylvania with my mother, who baked from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook and Hershey’s Chocolate Cookbook and recipes she had clipped from Good Housekeeping and collected in a recipe box, and I have baked ever since. But this was the 1980s. There was no such thing as searching the Internet for finding a recipe or clicking on Amazon.com to have a cookbook delivered to your door within days. Recipes were hard to come by, and for me, they seemed like something precious, secret codes to producing the beautiful, delicious things I wanted to create.

Cookbooks were also a gateway for me to the outside world. When I was in elementary school, someone gave my mom a cookbook as a gift: a collection of recipes from famous French restaurants across the United States. The recipes in the book were for classic fancy French dishes that I had never heard of: coquilles Saint-Jacques, duck à l’orange, île flottante, and I was enthralled. I liked reading the recipes and imagining this exotic food, but I also loved the stories behind the recipes and the accompanying pictures, the dreamy part of imagining what it would be like to be in the South of France enjoying a cherry almond tart over lunch on a warm summer afternoon. In the back of the book was a French-English dictionary, and I would use it to learn French words and pretend that I was speaking that language. My parents couldn’t have afforded to take their kids on European vacations; instead we went on camping trips to the seashore. But in college, I found a way to get to France through a study-abroad program in Tours, in the Loire region. France changed me. I learned to speak the language fluently. And I fell in love with the beautiful bakeries and the pastries I bought from them, and I wanted to know how those croissants, brioche, and cookies were made. This is when my true passion for baking began.

But I didn’t take that passion seriously at the time. Pragmatic by nature, I studied chemical engineering in college; I am good at science and this seemed like the wise thing to do. After college, I got an engineering job in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I didn’t like it. I was discontent and bored and soon I was daydreaming of cakes I wanted to bake and elaborate dinners I wanted to host. There was a group of young engineers living in Allentown and we would get together often for dinner parties; I used these gatherings as an excuse to take on ambitious cooking and baking projects. I loved those evenings—to be able to express myself through food, and to share that with others. My friends raved about my creations, which made me like the experience even more. Once, a work colleague complimented me on a bûche de Noël that I brought to a holiday party, saying that it looked like a professional had made it, and my heart leaped.

I got my first part-time pastry position, at a French restaurant located in an industrial park, the Winesellar and Brasserie, in San Diego while still working as a chemical engineer. The chef didn’t have a pastry chef, so he was grateful for the help, and he was willing to teach me. I worked there on weekends and evenings in addition to my full-time job. It brought me joy because I was learning to make things in a professional kitchen, something I had longed to do for some time. Claudia Fleming’s epic dessert book The Last Course had just come out, and her plating style and the simple, elegant, and unfussy way she composed desserts really resonated with me. I started making things from that book for the restaurant—peach tarte tatin in the summer and chocolate caramel tarts with fleur de sel—but I was blatantly falling short. I knew I needed to go someplace where I could really learn, and in early 2003, I left San Diego for New York City and enrolled in the pastry program at the French Culinary Institute, where I learned the fundamentals of baking, pastry, chocolate work, and dessert making. I believed that if I could study and work in a city as big as New York, then regardless of my own success, that was success enough.

After I graduated, I got a job at Babbo in the West Village, and it was a dream. I worked with the revered pastry chef Gina DePalma for two years. She became my mentor and a huge influence on my life as a baker. You will see her name frequently throughout these pages, because I learned so much from Gina, and so many of my recipes originated, in different versions, with her. She had a larger-than-life personality and opinions about everything. I soaked in everything I could from her, and to this day, I still do many things the way Gina taught me to do them, like whisking dry ingredients together in a bowl rather than sifting or stirring them.

After working with Gina, I went on to work for the bread baker Jim Lahey, who is best known for his “no knead” bread dough. I learned about fermentation from Jim, and I got to make his beautiful, rustic Italian loaves of bread. After I worked for Jim, I was the head baker at Thomas Keller’s Per Se. There, I continued to learn from the formulas that I inherited from the bakers who had come before me. The recipes at Per Se were mostly all French, and very precise and exacting. I learned the art of perfection at Per Se, and I learned about seasoning and balancing pastries with salt and acid. Finally, by the time I went to work at Roberta’s, the legendary pizzeria in Brooklyn, I was able to take all of that knowledge and experience I had acquired over a lifetime of baking and use it to make my own creations. I baked baguettes, sourdough bread, and bagels all in an outdoor pizza oven, and I started selling salted caramel sticky buns that were a knock-out success. The bagels that I was baking at Roberta’s segued into my own bagel stand at the outdoor Williamsburg Smorgasburg market, which in turn led to a larger project, Sadelle’s. When I opened Sadelle’s, a contemporary remake of a traditional New York City deli, in SoHo, I took those creations a step further and really started to take my pastries to an elevated place. Pastries that I would find at local delis and old-time bakery shops became inspiration for newly imagined, tastier, more creative versions. After Sadelle’s, I focused on Viennoiserie, like kouign amann and croissants. Using science, seasoning, and taste, I like to take ordinary pastries to a higher level, like pistachio sour cherry croissants and buckwheat kouign amann.

It’s easy enough, now, to sum this up on the of a résumé, but it didn’t happen overnight. Along the way, I turned to cookbooks for inspiration at every turn. I baked every single bread in Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery. I baked a lot from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course, which had just come out when I started getting serious about baking and pastry making. I read about flavor pairings in a book called Culinary Artistry by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. Those were the books that I devoured as I tried to develop my palate and to teach myself how to create classic baked goods with the most flavor.

As my interest in baking increased, so did my reliance on cookbooks. I was never content if the cakes, pies, or desserts I made for friends tasted great but looked homemade. I wanted them to look as if I had bought them at a professional bakery.

After I started working in professional kitchens, I had an aha! moment. As I was learning from the more experienced bakers around me, it was clear to me: if those recipes had just given a little hint about this or that, a little more detail here or there, my baked goods would have turned out looking like those in the pictures that inspired me to want to make them to begin with. I knew then that I wanted to write a cookbook. I also knew that I was just beginning on my path and that I had a lot to learn. I continued to bake at home, and as I did, I opened an Excel document for each recipe I made—those I developed, and those I liked from cookbooks that I was baking from. I tweaked the recipes and wrote detailed notes of my findings in the margins. It was this big dream that someday, I would compile those into a cookbook that had all the information that I was looking for when I was teaching myself to bake. After fifteen years of training, perfecting, and note-taking, this is that book.

In these pages, you will find recipes for the kinds of beautiful, seductive pastries you see in your favorite bakeshop: all-American classics such as cookies and pies, layer cakes, and muffins; New York favorites, including rugelach, babka, and challah; and laminated pastries, from croissants to kouign amann, inspired by my love of France. It is equal parts educational and aspirational, with recipes written in such detail that even a novice (but focused) home baker will be able to create professional-looking baked goods at home. It is the book I wanted when I was teaching myself to bake.

If you follow these recipes, which are very detailed, and read the instructions in the Master Classes and 101s, your cookies will have the same crackle top that make your favorite bakery cookies look so appealing; your pies will turn out pretty, with a deep golden crust, sparkling with sugar and defined, crimped edges and lattice that aren’t shrunken or misshapen; and your croissants will look indistinguishable from those you buy from a French patisserie. This is the cookbook I wish I’d had when first started out. It would have taught me everything I needed to achieve a “good bake” every time. Because a “good bake” is the best bake.

Setting Yourself Up for Success

Baking is all about precision, and about chemistry. You put something into a hot oven where it undergoes a transformation and emerges as something else. Each step along the way influences the final product. Because of this, I am very particular about how I execute even the most minute tasks. Below are some of the steps and considerations that I take throughout these recipes, and why.

Read the recipe

Read the recipe before you do anything else. I’m sure you’ve heard this piece of advice before, but I can’t stress how essential it is, and how much easier it will make your life in the end.

Write a baking schedule

After reading the recipe from beginning to end, go back through the recipe with a piece of paper and pen in hand, and write out a baking schedule. I write my schedule factoring in the parameters of my own day. My baking schedule for croissants might read:

Friday morning, before work:

Feed sourdough starter.

Friday, after work:

Feed sourdough starter.

Saturday morning:

Mix croissant dough using sourdough starter.

Refrigerate dough. Make butter packet.

Laminate croissant dough and refrigerate overnight.

Sunday morning:

Pull croissant dough from refrigerator. Roll out and shape croissants.

Proof.

Bake.

Mise en place

This is a French culinary term meaning “everything in its place,” and it refers to having all your ingredients in front of you and prepared. Get out all your ingredients, as well as the equipment and tools you are going to need for a recipe. Prep and measure your ingredients, and once you are done with them, put away the containers that those ingredients came in.

Work cleanly

Before you begin, clear your work area of anything you don’t need. And as you proceed with a recipe, clean your work area as you go. Having a neat and clean work area is something that really separates the amateurs from the pros and it is something I really stress when I am teaching. Working clean makes you proud of what you are doing. It also results in neater looking pastries.

Preheat the oven

I am very specific about how I preheat my oven. First, I give ample time to preheat—usually about 20 to 30 minutes. Keep an oven thermometer in your oven and confirm that it has reached the desired temperature before adding your creations to the oven. Before I got a new, better oven in my apartment, I used to keep a pizza stone on the floor of the oven at all times. With a home oven—especially a weak apartment oven—the heat rushes out every time you open the oven door. But the heat penetrates the stone, so by keeping the stone in the oven, the oven better maintains its temperature when you open and close the oven door or introduce cold dough.

Weighing versus measuring

Professional bakers weigh, they do not measure, ingredients. This idea may feel foreign to you at first because you’ve been using measuring cups all your life. But once you get used to weighing, you’ll see that it is actually easier and much less messy than measuring. The way it works is first you put a bowl on a food scale; next, tare the scale (zero it out) so you’re not weighing the bowl. Then add the first ingredient you are going to weigh to the bowl. Once you’ve added it, tare (zero out) the scale again so it’s back at zero and add the next ingredient. Continue until you’ve added all of the ingredients that are going into that bowl. Weighing ingredients is also much more accurate than measuring. Because there will always be variations in the density of ingredients, there will always be variations in volumetric measurements; weighed measurements, on the other hand, are always precise. I’m trained to be precise, and so I always weigh my ingredients.

Metric versus imperial weight

Metric is the system of measuring used everywhere throughout the world except in the United States. Metric weight is measured in grams and kilograms, while imperial weight refers to ounces and pounds. Where all bakers weigh rather than measure ingredients, bread bakers use almost exclusively metric measurements, rather than imperial. The reason for this is that the metric system works in increments of ten, and bakers use baker’s percentage to create their recipes. Baker’s percentage means the weights of the ingredients in a recipe are based on their ratio to the weight of the flour. First, you start a recipe with an amount of flour, usually 1 kilogram (or 1,000 grams). If you want water at a 70 percent ratio to the weight of the flour, then you know to add 700 grams of water. Salt is usually 2.2 percent, so you know to add 22 grams. So the math is easy. And once you have your recipe, you can easily scale it up or down because metric units are all based on multiples of ten. Even though this is not a bread baking book, I am a bread baker by nature and these recipes include metric measurements. The recipes do give the volumetric measures first, though, as a helping hand.

Temperature of ingredients

Temperature is an important factor when you’re baking, especially when you’re working with yeast and sourdough starter. The rate at which yeast grows and ferments is dictated by the temperature of both the ingredients and the environment. When I bake, I always consider the temperature, and throughout these recipes, you’ll see me referring to temperatures often. So just be mindful of temperatures when you’re baking. What’s your room temperature? What’s the temperature of the liquid in your recipe? What’s the temperature of your butter?

Chilling dough

I learned more about the importance of working with chilled dough when I was baking at home than I did in school and in all the professional kitchens I worked at combined. At home, even as a child baking with my mother, cookie dough would stick to the surface after I’d cut it with cookie cutters. Tart shells would rip when I was lining a pan. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, and I would get so frustrated. I wish someone had taught me then what I know now, which is that the secret trick is to work with dough that is chilled. Chilled dough does not stick to the counter or the rolling pin, and it also holds its shape in the oven, giving your baked goods a more professional look. Working with chilled dough includes more factors than simply chilling the dough before you work with it. It takes the amateur longer to roll out and work with dough, and the dough warms up in the process. Also, some bakers have cold hands; others have hot hands. If you’re rolling bread dough or shaping pretzels, it makes a big difference how long you’ve been working with the dough (and therefore how warm the dough became in the process) and how warm your hands are. The temperature of the room is also a factor. You’ll know when the dough has become warmer than you want it to be because it will be sticky and floppy and difficult to work with. The remedy is to put the dough in the refrigerator for 20 to 30 minutes until it is chilled, then start again.

Ingredients

I try to use the best ingredients I can find in whatever I am baking. At work, that’s easy: I have access to every kind of specialty flour or imported chocolate or vanilla I can imagine. At home, having the right ingredients requires a bit more organization. I am by nature a planner, and an organizer, so I keep my favorite things on hand. But very often, I get the spontaneous urge to make something and I don’t have everything I need. In those instances, I go to the small grocery store in my neighborhood and buy whatever brands they offer. As important as it is to use good ingredients—and I do believe it is—fresh, homemade baked goods are special in and of themselves.

Arrowroot

A few years ago, in an effort to cut down on corn-based ingredients, I started replacing the cornstarch in my recipes with arrowroot, a starch thickener made from a tropical tuber. Not only do I like that it is healthier than cornstarch, I like using arrowroot in pies because it is clear when it sets up, whereas cornstarch can make the filling cloudy. While I still use cornstarch in some of my recipes, I have converted many of them to use arrowroot.

Baking powder and baking soda

As a child, I learned to make muffins in home economics class. But when I tried to replicate them at home, they didn’t rise. My mom and I put two and two together and figured out that it was the baking soda: it was old, so it had lost its leavening power, and hence my flat muffins. Nowadays, I use my baking soda so quickly that it doesn’t have time to go bad, but assuming you do not bake at home every day, or even every week, you will want to buy fresh cans of baking powder and baking soda to replace the old once a year.

Butter

I use unsalted butter exclusively (although I do love beurre de baratte, which is a cultured, salted butter from France, for spreading on toast or biscuits). This is common practice in professional kitchens; if you start with unsalted butter, you can control how much salt you use. These recipes have all been tested using Land O’Lakes butter, which is a very consistent product and also widely available. If you want to splurge and use European-style, use it in laminated pastries, where the butter is the focal point. For laminating, my preferred brands of European-style butter are Plugra and Beurremont. On the rare occasion when I use salted butter and you find yourself with none on hand, you can add ½ teaspoon of salt to the recipe.

Chocolate

Valrhona sells chocolate in thin oval disks called feves. This is my preferred chocolate, because I can use it as chocolate chunks for cookies (I cut each feve in half), and if I’m melting chocolate, there is no chopping involved, and no residual dust (waste) as a result. Manjari is my bittersweet chocolate of choice, and Jivara is my favorite milk chocolate.

Cocoa powder

My preferred brand is Valrhona; I just think the taste is superior to all others. I use Valrhona cocoa powder in my professional kitchen exclusively, but if I can’t find it for home use, I use Ghirardelli or Hershey’s cocoa powder, and that works just fine.

Eggs

I use large eggs, preferably organic, because I can count on each one weighing about 50 grams. When I’m making something that highlights a cooked egg, such as the Khachapuri with Cheese, Baked Egg, and Nigella Seeds (this page), which has a baked, runny egg on top, I look for the best eggs I can find, ideally from a local farm.

Flour

All-purpose flour

All-purpose flour is the basic refined white flour and the base of the vast majority of these recipes. I use King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour exclusively, in both my professional and home kitchens. The main difference when it comes to refined white flours, including all-purpose flour, bread flour, cake flour, and pastry flour, is how much protein each contains. The more protein in a flour, the more gluten is developed during the process of working it. And the more gluten is formed, the stronger and more elastic your dough will be, and the chewier your baked goods will be as a result. Dough with less gluten will yield tender pastry, such as piecrust. I use all-purpose flour in place of bread flour in many of my breads, such as the Summer Focaccia with Sungolds, Corn, and Basil Pesto (this page) and the Hot Dog Buns (this page), because it makes for a more tender bread, with a better mouth feel, where bread flour tends to make things chewier than necessary.

Bread flour

A refined white flour, bread flour has more protein than all-purpose flour, which aids in gluten development. I use it when I need to develop more gluten, and therefore more strength in my dough, such as for Cherry and Pistachio Panettone (this page) and yeasted sandwich breads. It is also my preferred flour to use when feeding my Sourdough Starter (this page).

Buckwheat flour

Don’t let the name fool you: buckwheat, and hence buckwheat flour, is gluten free. Buckwheat has a distinct, brownish-gray color (I think it’s pretty) and an even more distinct, earthy flavor. It is grown in Brittany, and there you find all kinds of pastry using buckwheat. I was inspired to make Buckwheat Kouign Amann (this page) on a trip to Brittany. Look for stone-ground flour, locally milled if possible.

Cake flour

Cake flour has less protein in it than all-purpose flour. King Arthur is my preferred brand. Ideally, I seek out unbleached cake flour, but often I use whatever I find at the grocery store.

Rye flour

Very often, I like to switch out all-purpose flour for a more flavorful flour like rye flour, such as in the Rye Pâte Sucrée (this page) that I use as a base for my Lemon Rosemary Curd Tart (this page). It has almost a gray tone to it, and an unusual flavor that pairs nicely with the lemon.

Spelt flour

Spelt is a strain of wheat native to Europe. It is not gluten free, but it contains less gluten than whole wheat. I use spelt flour because I like the layer of nutty flavor it adds to baked goods, such as Spelt Bull’s-Eye Scones (this page).

Whole-wheat pastry flour

Because it has a lower protein content than whole-wheat flour, when you bake with whole-wheat pastry flour, you get the nice wheat flavor without the heaviness often associated with whole-grain baked goods. I “sneak” it into a lot of doughs where you’d never know it was there, from my Master Recipe for Pâte Brisée (this page) to several muffins, scones, casual cakes, cookies, breads, and even laminated pastries, such as my Classic Croissants (this page). I add the whole-wheat pastry flour to the dough not to make these things healthier, but because I like the layer of flavor it adds.

Nonstick cooking spray

Professional bakeries use nonstick cooking spray, not butter, to grease baking pans, muffin tins, and baking sheets. It is easy to use and efficient—it is easy to get a thin, even, and thorough coat that gets into the crevices of any shape of pan. When baking at home, I sometimes use butter instead of nonstick cooking spray, such as to butter cake pans.

Salt

Fine sea salt

I use fine sea salt exclusively in my baking. This is because I’m a bread baker first, and in bread baking, we always use fine sea salt. Sea salt can be used interchangeably with other types of salt, such as kosher salt, if you weigh it; the volumes of different types of salt vary considerably. So, invest in a tall container of La Baleine fine sea salt and use that as you bake from this book. It’s the brand I use at home.

Flaky sea salt

When I want to add a pinch of salt on top of a pastry as a finishing touch, I use a large flaky, mineral-tasting sea salt. The easiest such salt to find is Maldon, which is from England. I also use a similar Nordic salt. Both have large, thin, shard-like flakes that add a wonderful crunchy element to foods.

Spices

I look for nice spices, but I don’t throw them away after a certain period of time, like some cookbooks suggest you do. I cook and bake a lot, so I suppose my spices are on a pretty good rotation naturally. The one spice I do have something to say about is nutmeg. I buy whole nutmeg, which has such better flavor and aroma than ground. And it’s so easy to grate: Just take the little nut, which is about the size of the end of your thumb, and grate it on a fine Microplane. I call for specific amounts of nutmeg in my recipes, but the truth is that I usually eyeball it. I grate the nutmeg so that it falls straight into whatever I’m making, until I think I’ve added enough.

Sugar

Granulated sugar

I stick with Domino or, if I’m in California, C&H, because my priority when choosing a sugar to bake with is consistent texture. Both are pure cane sugars.

Confectioners’ sugar

Aka powdered sugar, confectioners’ sugar is known in professional kitchens as 10X sugar, because it is ground ten times as fine as granulated sugar. It contains cornstarch, which also affects its texture. It’s used often in making frostings and glazes and other applications where the goal is a smooth texture. It is the not-so-secret ingredient in my Chocolate Chunk Cookies (this page).

Brown sugar

Brown sugar is made by combining granulated sugar with molasses. Light brown sugar has less molasses and dark brown sugar has more. I suggest you stick with Domino or C&H for the sake of consistency.

Demerara sugar

Also called turbinado sugar (sold as Sugar in the Raw), demerara sugar is a coarse, natural sugar with a pretty, light caramel color. I use it as my sanding sugar, meaning I sprinkle it on baked goods to add an organic sparkle effect. I also use it to sweeten my Blueberry Blackberry Slab Pie (this page).

Vanilla

Vanilla beans

Vanilla beans have such a wonderful, pure flavor and aroma. When shopping for vanilla beans, look for ones that are plump and moist. Sometimes in the grocery store you don’t have that option; you just get whatever bean you can find. Store them in a sealable plastic bag in your refrigerator. Use “spent” vanilla beans to make Vanilla Sugar (this page).

Vanilla extract

Buy only pure vanilla extract; the imitation stuff is not even close. I always buy the best brand that I can find, which varies depending on where I am shopping. What I don’t ever use is artificial vanilla extract.

Yeast

Instant yeast

I love fresh yeast, and in my professional kitchens, I use fresh yeast more often than not. When I bake at home, I use only instant yeast because it is so easy to get. You can buy instant yeast in little packets in the baking section of grocery stores, although I suggest you seek out one-pound bags from a baking supply store or Internet source. Store it in the freezer and dip into it as needed; you could bake every recipe in this book and never have to buy another packet of yeast. If you do buy the small packets, the most common brand you will see is Fleischmann’s, which is labeled “RapidRise Instant Yeast.” It is the same thing as instant dry yeast sold in one-pound bags. The yeast I buy both for home baking and in my professional kitchens is SAF-Instant Yeast, which comes in a one-pound red bag. You can find it easily from online sources and some specialty food stores. Note that instant yeast is not the same thing as active dry yeast. They can be used interchangeably, however, active dry yeast must be “bloomed” first. I do not use active dry yeast in any of these recipes, so don’t buy that if you’re shopping for this book.

Osmotolerant yeast

This is a type of instant yeast that I use for doughs that contain sugar, and in all of my Viennoiserie production. When you are working with a dough that contains sugar, the sugar and yeast both compete for the water in the dough. Osmotolerant yeast is a strain of yeast that does not compete with the sugar for the water; so, if a dough contains 5 percent or more sugar based on the weight of the flour, it is best to use osmotolerant yeast to make it. The brand I buy is SAF-Instant gold yeast. Nowhere on the package does it say “osmotolerant.” I have no idea how the consumer is supposed to know the difference, but trust me when I say that the SAF gold is osmotolerant and the SAF red is regular instant yeast. Although the labeling is confusing, and although I prefer osmotolerant yeast for dough that has a high sugar content, the good news is that the two can be used interchangeably.

Sourdough starter

Sourdough starter is a natural leavening, a mix of flour and water and natural yeast, that is used to ferment dough. It is what gives sourdough bread its characteristic sour or tangy flavor. See Sourdough Starter (this page) to make your own. In a pinch, you can also buy it from your local bakery, or order it online from King Arthur Flour.

Equipment and Tools

I don’t want to tell anyone that they have to go out and spend a bunch of money just to make my recipes, but baking does require specific vessels—different sizes and shapes of pans are just tools of the trade. Those that I use in this book are listed here, and so is the equipment that I use in my day-to-day life baking at home or in professional kitchens to make baking easy and enjoyable. I don’t always buy everything I need; I get by with what I have. I have one cooling rack when I should have two. I don’t own a blender, so I use a food processor instead. And I keep things forever. I still have and use the whisk that my friend Gina DePalma gave me as a gift more than a dozen years ago. And I still use a lot of cooking gear, including a Pyrex glass pie plate, that I inherited from my grandmother, who passed away right after I graduated from college.

I have a tool kit that I take with me when I’m traveling and I think cooking will be involved. This includes a pair of tongs, a Magiwhisk, a Victorinox serrated paring knife, and my digital scale. No matter how poorly stocked the kitchen may be, if I have all of those things, I know I’ll survive.

Aluminum baking sheets

I use 12-gauge commercial baking sheets that have a lip or rim around them. They conduct heat evenly and they don’t buckle in the oven the way some baking sheets do. My home kitchen is stocked with half sheet pan–size baking sheets (18 x 13 inches), which is what I refer to in this book as a “baking sheet.” Since this is a standardized product, it stacks well, which means you can store a lot of them in your kitchen with no problem. It’s a good idea to have at least four, but two will do the trick, sometimes with some juggling involved. I also use a quarter sheet pan (13 x 9 inches) for baking Pull-Apart Parker House Rolls (this page) and Hot Cross Buns (this page).

Bench knife

A bench knife is a simple rectangular tool that bakers use to scrape the counter clean, and to cut dough. If you buy a good one, it will have a sharp enough edge that it functions like a knife. In a professional bread bakery, it is an everyday tool, and it functions as a knife. This is what we use to cut hundreds of pieces of dough, which we then throw on the scale for even scaling. The important thing for me in choosing a bench knife is that it is tall enough that I can cut through a block of dough without the dough hitting the handle.

Box grater

This old-school tool is still the best for grating vegetables and cheese.

Candy thermometer

I use my clip-on candy thermometer to gauge the temperature of oil when I am deep-frying, or when I’m cooking sugar syrup and jam on the stove top. It’s not something that I use often, but when I do need to use one, it is essential. I still use the candy thermometer that I bought for my pastry class at the French Culinary Institute in 2004.

Cake pans

When you bake a lot, you end up with a lot of different cake pans. Mine are all anodized aluminum, which is another way to say “nonstick.” I also have many stainless-steel cake pans that I acquired from my grandmother. Among the shapes of cake pans called for in this book, and that I think are part of a well-stocked kitchen, are:

8- x 2-inch round cake pans (3)

8-inch square baking pan

10-inch Bundt pan

9-inch springform pan

2-quart steamed pudding mold

Cooling racks

I use cooling racks to place baking sheets on when they first come out of the oven. And then I transfer the baked goods directly onto the cooling racks to cool completely. Placing baked goods on a cooling rack allows the air to circulate so they don’t continue to cook from the residual heat of the pan. You can live without a cooling rack, but in the pursuit of perfect baked goods, one or two is worth the small investment.

Digital probe thermometer

Throughout these recipes, I often call for water and milk at specific temperatures, and the way to measure the temperature is with this inexpensive gadget. I also use it to make lemon curd and to take the internal temperature of some baked goods.

Digital scale

A food scale is an essential in any baker’s kitchen. Buy a sturdy, good-quality one; you’ll have it forever.

Food processor

A mini food processor comes in handy for grinding small amounts of ingredients, and they’re so inexpensive that it’s nice to have one around. But there is no replacement for a full-size food processor, which I call for in several recipes. I don’t have a blender; this is my sole pureeing tool.

Industrial plastic wrap

I love to buy professional-grade plastic wrap, which comes in an 18-inch roll and is so much more effective than what is sold in grocery stores. It actually sticks and seals, whereas the other stuff just falls off. You can buy it online at WebstaurantStore.com, Amazon.com, or from restaurant supply stores. Buy one roll and it will last you almost forever.

Jelly-roll pan

A jelly-roll pan is an aluminum pan with a 1-inch lip. It looks just like a baking sheet, but smaller. I use a jelly-roll pan for making slab pies. The pans vary slightly in size. Mine is 10 inches by 15 inches.

Kitchen shears

Once you get used to using kitchen shears in the cooking and baking process, you won’t know how you ever lived without them. I reach for them for everything from cutting parchment paper and opening packages to cutting focaccia. The key difference between kitchen shears and any other scissors is that the two sides come apart, so you can wash them thoroughly, which is important because they come into contact with food.

Loaf pans

You will need a standard 9- x 4-inch loaf pan for some recipes, and Pullman loaf pans in two sizes: 9 x 4 inches for babka and 13 x 4 inches for sandwich breads. I love the straight sides of the Pullman loaf pan and use it to make loaves such as Ricotta Chocolate Chip Pound Cake (this page) that might otherwise be baked in a standard loaf pan. I use the larger Pullman for baking bread loaves for slicing. The Pullman pan has a lid that slides on it, which I use when I make some breads, such as the Whole-Wheat Pain au Lait Pullman (this page); it gives the loaf square edges, which is nice for sandwiches. I leave the lid off for other loaves, such as the Sourdough Brioche Loaf (this page), where I want a beautiful rounded, golden brown top. The lid doesn’t just affect the shape of the loaf. By forgoing the lid, you get a lighter, airier loaf because you are not constricting the dough.

Microplane

I use a fine-holed Microplane to grate whole nutmeg and for zesting citrus. I like to hold the Microplane still and move the nut or fruit across the plane, not the other way around, but do what feels comfortable to you.

Muffin tins

I suggest you keep two types: one large tin that has 12 standard muffin cups and four smaller tins, each with 6 jumbo cups. I use them for muffins, of course, and I also use the jumbo tins to make the Salted Caramel Sticky Buns (this page).

Offset spatula

An offset spatula is a long metal spatula with a handle that is offset and juts out at an angle, which gives you more control. I use both large and small offset spatulas, and I use them often for evening out batter in a cake pan, for spreading fillings over sheets of dough, and for frosting cakes, among other things.

Oven thermometer

To make sure I’m baking at the correct temperature, I keep an oven thermometer in the oven at all times. I’ve tried different brands and they all seem to break—or the glass gets so fogged up you can’t read them. So, yes, you have to replace them from time to time. But the good news is, they aren’t expensive.

Parchment paper

Once you’ve baked in a professional kitchen, you wouldn’t think of baking on a baking sheet that wasn’t lined with parchment paper. Using parchment makes easy work of cleanup: you just lift off the sheet and throw it away; no scrubbing involved. (If you want to conserve paper, you can do what is required in many professional kitchens, which is to turn the parchment over and bake on the other side before throwing it out.) Sheets of parchment paper that fit perfectly in a half sheet pan–size baking sheet are available at baking supply stores and online. They are very convenient to use because you don’t have to measure and cut, and they also don’t curl up the way parchment cut from a roll does. At conventional grocery stores, you can also buy folded sheets of parchment that are equally convenient.

Paring knife

My go-to small knife is a small serrated paring knife made by Victorinox. Because it is serrated, I don’t have to worry about sharpening it. It has a plastic handle. It’s really basic. And equally inexpensive. But it works perfectly. I use it for all small tasks, from splitting and scraping vanilla beans to hulling strawberries or slicing garlic.

Pastry bags

I use 18-inch disposable pastry bags, which I buy by the roll from a baking supply store or Amazon.com. Many home bakers are not familiar with these bags, but they’re smart: they’re inexpensive, easy to obtain, and there is no washing involved.

Pastry brushes

I keep two pastry brushes in my kitchen: a Swissmar washable silicone brush for brushing wet ingredients, such as water, egg, or melted butter. And a natural bristle brush, which looks like a paintbrush, which I never get wet, and which I use for brushing flour off of pastry dough.

Pastry tips

I use pastry tips for piping dough and also for decorating with royal icing. I use only a few basic tips: for example, a small round tip (Ateco #6) for icing and an open-star pastry tip (Ateco #825) for piping churros.

Pastry wheel

This rolling cutter is part of every serious baker’s tool kit. I use mine constantly, for nicking dough when I am measuring, for making more precise cuts, and for cutting the dough.

Plastic bowl scraper

This simple, inexpensive handheld tool is an essential in bread baking. Bread dough tends to be very sticky. A bowl scraper is stiff, but it is flexible, and it’s curved on one side to reflect the curve of a bowl so you can really scrape your bowl clean with it. It doesn’t have a handle, so you hold it in your palm, and it feels like an extension of your hand. It costs about a dollar. Get one.

Roul’Pat

You may be familiar with a Silpat, which is a silicone mat used in place of parchment paper to line baking sheets. I don’t use those; I use parchment instead because it’s just so easy to come by. But I do use the lesser-known relative of Silpat, the Roul’Pat. Essentially a larger version of a Silpat, the mat lies on your counter and you roll dough on it. I like that it requires you to use much less flour to keep the dough from sticking, which is a good thing because too much flour can change the texture and the flavor of what you’re baking. I still use the Roul’Pat that Gina DePalma gave me more than a decade ago. She was cleaning out the kitchen at Babbo and said, “Here, Melissa. Take this.” I remember thinking: I don’t want it. I’ll never use it. But I did anything Gina told me to do, so I took it home and started using it. Now, I use a Roul’Pat any time I roll out dough at home.

Rolling pin

I use an 18-inch straight rolling pin, which bakers refer to as a “French rolling pin,” exclusively. I’ve always called it a French rolling pin, but it’s actually called a “straight rolling pin.” This is a rolling pin without handles, which allows me to feel how much pressure I am putting on the dough. French rolling pins come with tapered edges or straight all the way across; I like the straight ones. I don’t use a rolling pin with handles, ever. But I understand that using a rolling pin with handles can be easier for the novice, and it is also more ergonomically correct, so if you want to use a rolling pin with handles, look for a ball-bearing one.

Rubber spatulas

Silicone rubber spatulas are essential for cleaning mixing bowls. I have a few shapes and sizes, all heat proof, that I reach for at different moments.

Pie plate

I use a Pyrex glass 9-inch pie plate because it makes for the most evenly browned piecrust. You don’t get the same golden brown crust from fancy ceramic pie plates. And crusts tend to burn or brown unevenly in aluminum pie tins. The glass pie plates are inexpensive, easy to find, and the best for the job.

Pie weights or dried beans

I own a set of pie weights that I bought at a fancy cookware store, but the set doesn’t contain enough weights to fill the pie shell as deeply as I like to. I almost always bypass my pie weights and use two pounds of dried beans instead. Either works equally well.

Dried beans are cheap, easy to find, and, like “official” pie weights, you can reuse them. Put them in a container and label it “pie weights” so you don’t accidentally cook them.

Santoku knife

A Santoku is a Japanese knife, similar in size to a classic European chef’s knife, but with a straighter blade that is not meant for chopping using a rocking motion the way a chef’s knife is. My 8-inch Wüsthof Santoku is the knife I use for all my chopping, whether it’s for rhubarb, apples, onions, or herbs. A Santoku also has a dimpled edge, which keeps whatever you are chopping from sticking to the blade.

Serrated bread knife

I have two serrated knives, one offset and one regular. I use the offset serrated knife for slicing bread. By using an offset serrated knife, when you are slicing downward through the loaf, your hand doesn’t hit the cutting board when it gets to the bottom, as the knife blade gets there first. I use a standard serrated knife to cut through cake layers. Having both is ideal, but one or the other is fine. If you were going out to buy only one, I would suggest the offset knife, which is more versatile.

Spice grinder

I use a spice grinder, which looks exactly like a coffee grinder (and a coffee grinder can be used in its place) for grinding spices and seeds, such as sesame seeds for the Black Sesame Kouign Amann (this page).

Stand mixer

A stand mixer is an essential in a baker’s kitchen. There are some things, like creaming butter and sugar together, where handheld beaters could be substituted. But for making bread dough, which requires some strength, only a stand mixer will do. You can also walk away from a stand mixer while it’s working, which means you can multitask: get ingredients ready or clean up while the mixer is doing its work. I use a 6-quart KitchenAid mixer, but the 8-quart mixer is amazing, and if I were buying one again, that is the one I would buy.

Stainless-steel bowls

Stainless-steel bowls are really important in baking. They’re more efficient than ceramic bowls because they’re lightweight and they don’t break. You need stainless-steel bowls when you’re setting up a double boiler, and when you’re weighing ingredients into a bowl, a lightweight bowl is important, so the scale doesn’t top out. Stainless-steel bowls are also practical from a storage point of view because they nest. And, they are inexpensive; I suggest you buy a set of nesting bowls for everyday use. Save the beautiful ceramic bowls for serving purposes.

Straightedge

A straightedge, or ruler, is essential for measuring dough when you’re rolling it, and to use as a guide for a pastry wheel when cutting dough for more precise pastries, such as croissants.

Strainers

It’s nice to have fine-mesh strainers in a few different sizes for rinsing grains, draining anything you’ve soaked (such as dried fruit), or straining citrus juice.

Tart pans

I call for French removable-bottom tart pans in two recipes: I use a 9-inch pan for the Lemon Rosemary Curd Tart with Rye Crust (this page) and a 10½-inch pan for the Chestnut Honey Walnut Tart (this page). The removable bottom means that the tart stands on its own, out of the pan, which is such a pretty look. You can use either fluted or not fluted interchangeably, whichever you find, or like the look of better.

Tongs

Something that surprises me when I’m cooking in other people’s homes or in a rented Airbnb is how many people don’t have metal tongs. Tongs are your best friend in the kitchen, especially when you’re cooking at the stove. They’re like an extension of your hand. When you’re sautéing, you can turn things much more easily using tongs than with a spatula. They’re also great for turning vegetables that are roasting in the oven. And nothing else will do when you’re deep- or shallow-frying. I wish more people would think about using tongs.

Whisk

Hands down the best whisk is a Magiwhisk. It’s small, compact, lightweight, and it does the job better than any other type. I use it for small jobs, such as whisking eggs for egg wash or making salad dressing. I have a 14-inch piano whisk for everything else.

Yeast Tutorial

If you have never worked with yeast, I know it can be intimidating. Even the language can seem mysterious when you are not familiar with it. This is not a book about bread baking, so I am going to skip over some of the intricacies, but I do use yeast throughout these recipes—in the Savory Breads, Sweet Yeasted Breads, and Laminated Pastries chapters—so I want to give you a basic understanding of yeast and how it works.

The basic principle behind yeast is that it is a leavener: like baking soda or baking powder, it causes baked goods to rise. The difference is that baking soda and powder are chemical leaveners, where yeast is a natural, organic leavener. (A third type of leavener is “mechanical.” An example of that is whipped egg whites.) Whether you are working with dry yeast, fresh yeast (compressed or cake), or natural yeast (sourdough starter), yeast eats the sugars and damaged starches in your dough and produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. The carbon dioxide leavens the dough. Different types of yeast are used to leaven different baked goods. Some recipes are leavened with commercial yeast (such as the instant dry yeast I use in many of these recipes), some with sourdough starter, and some with a combination of the two. I often use a combination: the commercial yeast for reliability and consistency and the sourdough starter for the flavor it adds to baked goods. (For more detail, see Sourdough Starter, this page.)

The two principal factors in activating yeast are temperature and time: the temperature of the dough and the amount of time you let it ferment and proof.

The following is a short glossary of terms related to yeast.

Autolyse

Autolyse is a technique that was developed in France by a baker named Raymond Calvel, who discovered that—because both salt and yeast inhibit gluten formation—if you let flour and water sit together before adding salt and yeast, gluten forms better. I use autolyse in doughs for which crumb structure and stretch of gluten are important, such as for baguette dough. In this book, I use it with my focaccia dough because focaccia dough is stretched, and the dough stretches better with stronger gluten formation. Most professional bakers autolyse their dough for about 30 minutes and that is what I call for. Some bakers hold back the salt and yeast completely. I introduce them in two distinct piles on top of the dough, so they begin to dissolve into the dough but don’t inhibit the gluten. I don’t like them to touch because the salt will take the water away from the yeast and the yeast will start to die.

Biga

An Italian stiff sourdough starter, biga is a type of preferment (see this page). Its hydration is much lower than the liquid sourdough starter I normally use. I convert my liquid starter to a stiff starter to make my Cherry and Pistachio Panettone (this page).

Crumb

The crumb refers to the texture inside a baked good. It is defined by the gelatinized starch and the holes that are produced during leavening. A croissant should have a nice, big, open-holed honeycomb structure. Brioche should have a tighter crumb, with a lot of small, wide, uniform holes and no big ones.

Fermentation

Professional bakers refer to the first rise as the “fermentation,” and that is how I refer to it in this book. The first rise, or fermentation period, comes at the point in the process when you have just finished mixing the dough and the yeast has begun to feed on it. Your dough will be what we call “in bulk,” which means it will be in the mixing bowl, covered, in a warm place, which allows the yeast to grow. Fermentation can also take place in the refrigerator, where, because of the colder temperature, the yeast growth slows down; this slow growth contributes a lot of flavor. Oftentimes, I like to start my fermentation in a warm room and then move the dough to the refrigerator to give it a long and slow rise; extending the time improves the baked good’s flavor.

Poolish

A poolish is a type of preferment (see below). A poolish is equal parts water and flour and a small amount of commercial yeast. It is mixed between 12 and 24 hours before mixing the dough into which it will be added. I use a poolish in making focaccia because it adds extensibility to the dough, which enables me to stretch the dough into the pan in which the focaccia is baked.

Preferment

A preferment is dough that is fermented before it is added to the main dough, which will also be fermented. The types of preferments used in this book are sourdough starter, poolish, sponge, and biga. All preferments add flavor to dough, and also boost fermentation.

Proofing

Proofing refers to the second rise of the dough. This takes place after the fermentation stage. You remove the dough from the bowl and shape it according to the requirements of the finished product: a loaf of bread, a roll, or a croissant, etc. After being shaped, the dough needs to rise again, or proof. A professional baker often relies on time and the size of a product to judge when something is proofed properly, but this can be tricky to judge for the novice baker. When you are starting out, the best way to tell if something is proofed is by poking it with your fingertip. Bread and pastry products proof from the outside toward the center, so you want to poke the dough in two places: the tip or end of the pastry, and also in the center. When dough is done proofing, the tip should really hold the indentation, while the center should hold the indentation but spring back a little.

The same dough, shaped into a small roll, will take less time to proof than that dough shaped into a large loaf. The longer you proof an enriched dough (any dough that has fat such as oil or butter or eggs in it), the lighter and fluffier and bigger it will become. At a certain point in proofing any dough, you will reach the point of no return where the dough will proof no more and will start to collapse either before it goes into the oven or during the bake.

Retard

Retarding dough means to slow down the fermentation process. This is done by cooling the dough, which you do by putting it in the refrigerator. Yeast growth slows down in cooler temperatures, so by cooling the dough, you slow down the fermentation process. Besides fermentation, the other thing that is happening when you are retarding dough is that the enzymes that occur in flour and yeast break down the damaged starches (complex sugar) in the flour into simple sugars. Simple sugars contribute to the flavor of the dough and also cause it to brown in the oven. By retarding the dough, you give the enzymes the opportunity to break down the starches into sugars, which enhances the flavor of the dough. Also, increased sugar in the dough means increased browning. So, by waiting, you get that deep, burnished exterior on breads and pastries. Due to the Maillard reaction—a chemical reaction between naturally occurring amino acids in food and sugars that reduce as a product of heat—browned foods not only look better, they also taste better.

Sponge

A sponge is a type of preferment. I use it to boost the fermentation of Rum and Raisin Stollen (this page) because that dough is laden with butter, rum, dried fruits, and nuts, all of which impede fermentation.

Turn/Fold

Turning and folding are the same thing and I use the words interchangeably. You turn/fold dough during the fermentation process. The dough at this point will be in a bowl, covered with plastic wrap or a towel. To turn the dough (which I generally do every hour, so in the middle of a two-hour fermentation, or at the end of a one-hour fermentation), first, uncover the bowl. Wet your hands, which prevents the dough from sticking to them, and pick up one edge of the dough and bring it toward the center. Do the same with the opposite edge of the dough, then with the top and bottom edges. This is a more orderly method of what is also called punching down the dough. This little bit of movement helps to redistribute the yeast and strengthen the dough. (Folding can also refer to the process during lamination of folding the dough and butter layers into a book or letter shape.)

Sourdough Starter

My formula for sourdough starter is for what is known as a liquid starter, as opposed to a biga, or stiff starter. If you were someone who enjoyed chemistry class, as I did, I think you’ll enjoy making sourdough starter. It is a natural leavening made from a culture of flour, water, and natural yeast found in the air; bacteria work in harmony with the yeast to create flavor in the culture, so each sourdough starter has a unique character. You can buy sourdough starter from an established bakery or online, or you can make yours from scratch.

To make sourdough starter from scratch, you start with flour, water, and a small amount of honey. Choosing the flour that you build your starter from is important. Many organic stone-ground flours contain a fair amount of natural yeast, because yeast spores attach themselves to grains, and in the case of organic stone-ground flours, that yeast remains attached to the grain during the process of milling it into flour. Rye flour in particular is known to have a very high natural yeast content, which is why I start with rye flour when building a starter from scratch. (You may have heard about people beginning a starter with grapes; that is because natural yeast is found on the skins of grapes. I believe there is more yeast found in stone-ground rye flour than grapes, so that’s the strategy I use.) Yeast feed off of sugar, which is why I add honey to my starter; it acts like a vitamin boost, kick-starting the growth of the yeast. As the days progress and I am building my starter, I scale back the amount of rye flour and replace it with bread flour and whole-wheat flour.

Yeast is like a pet. It needs food (flour), water, and a warm environment to thrive.

It takes six days for sourdough starter to ripen fully to a point where you can use it. When you are building your starter, you “feed” it twice a day. Yeast feeds off of flour, so “feeding” your starter means mixing a small amount of the “mother” starter (that is the starter that you are working with, which has already fermented) with flour and water. The point of doing this is to build up the concentration of yeast in the culture. (Sourdough starter should really be called sourdough culture because it is the yeast culture that starts your sourdough loaf.)

The most important factor in the success of ripening a starter from scratch, or maintaining a starter, besides feeding it every day, is temperature. The ideal water and air temperature for ripening starter is approximately 75°F. If the water or air is too cold, the yeast won’t thrive, and you won’t notice much activity. Likewise, if you forget to feed your starter, it will start to look gray and liquidy and sad.

A healthy, ripened sourdough starter that is ready to use to make bread will have grown in volume, and there will be bubbles, lots of bubbles. If you use a clear container, you will be able to see the bubbles on the sides and you will also notice bubbles on the top of the starter when you remove the lid from the container.

Sourdough starter is constantly growing and changing. The yeast will start feeding on the damaged starches and sugars immediately. When you first feed it, the starter will look like a thick paste with no bubbles. As the yeast grows and the starter ripens, bubbles form and become more voluminous and the gluten proteins break down, taking the starter from a stiff paste to a light, airy, bubbly slurry.

There is a window of time in which starter will ferment and proof bread at an optimal rate. How long the starter takes to get to this point depends on how much mother is used to make the sourdough culture. If you use a lot of mother, your sourdough starter could be ready in as little as two hours. Using the proportion of mother to flour and water in my sourdough starter recipe, the starter should be ripe and ready to properly raise bread after fermenting and growing for eight hours, and can be used until up to fourteen hours after it was last fed.

I can’t tell you how many people tell me, “I killed my starter!” But, in fact, once you’ve got it going, a starter is nearly impossible to kill. To revive a seemingly dead starter, first, drain any liquid that has formed on top. Then feed the starter according to the maintenance feed (see this page). If the starter is not active, wait a full day before feeding it again. At this point, you may want to double or triple the amount of ripened starter (the mother) you add to the feed. Wait another full day before feeding it again, and within a day or two, you will start to see some activity. Once you can see that the starter is beginning to bubble and grow, resume feeding it twice a day.

You can make sourdough starter in a glass or plastic container; the important thing is that it have a tight-fitting lid and that it hold at least 1½ quarts. (If you use a 1-quart container, when the starter expands, the pressure of it will cause it to explode out of the container.) Because in feeding the starter you move it from one container to another, it’s ideal to have two such containers.

Note Making starter from scratch requires a lot of flour. It will be more than you anticipate. I like to keep a 5-pound bag of bread or all-purpose flour on hand when I know that I will be growing a starter from scratch.

Day One: Morning

Organic rye grains have natural yeast on them, so starting with stone-ground flour from this grain is key to developing yeast in the starter. The honey acts as a vitamin booster for the yeast. You will give the starter a full day to begin to ferment before feeding it again. Still, this is the beginning stage and there won’t be a high enough concentration of yeast in the mixture for you to notice a visible difference after the first day.

Water (70°F to 75°F)	1½ cups	352 grams
Organic stone-ground rye flour	1½ cups	300 grams
Mild-flavored honey (such as wildflower or clover)	1 teaspoon	7 grams

Put the water in a 1½-quart or larger container with a tight-fitting lid. Add the flour and honey and stir with a spoon to combine. Cover the container and set it in a warm place, such as near or on your stove (approximately 75°F), for 24 hours.

Day Two: Morning feed

Your starter will still look like flour mixed with water. To continue to encourage the yeasts to grow, take a portion of the yeast culture—this is “ripened starter” or “mother”—and mix it with flour and water. This is “feeding” your starter.

When feeding your starter, you begin with a small amount (about 1 tablespoon) of the mother starter. If you were baking with the starter, after using what you need for your recipe, the amount left would be just about what you need. But if you’re not baking it, you discard the rest. Although it might feel wasteful to discard it, unless you’re baking with it, or sharing it with friends, there is no alternative. If you were to feed the entire starter instead of just this small amount, the amount of flour you would add would not be enough food for the yeast and the yeast would eventually starve; your bread volume would shrink, and your starter would stop rising as a result. Starting with a small amount of ripened starter helps the yeast to grow at a good rate without starving it. Because your starter on day two will not be very active, you will use a larger amount of mother than what you use with an active starter (1 cup versus 1 tablespoon).

Water (70°F to 75°F)	1 cups	235 grams
Mother (the mixture from Day One)	1 cup	200 grams
Organic stone-ground rye flour	1 cup	110 grams
Bread flour (or all-purpose flour)	¾ cup	90 grams

Put the water in a 1½-quart (or larger) container with a tight-fitting lid. Scoop out 200 grams (1 cup) of the original starter and add it to the container; discard the remaining starter. Add the rye flour and bread flour and stir with a metal spoon to combine. Cover the container and set the starter in a warm place (approximately 75°F) for approximately 12 hours.

Day Two: Evening feed

Depending on how warm it is in your home and other factors, such as humidity, by this time, your starter may already be very active. If it is active, you will see bubbles on the top of the starter (and from the side if you are using a glass container); yeast produces carbon dioxide and alcohol and those bubbles indicate that there is yeast activity. The starter may also be rising considerably in the container. That is the carbon dioxide and gluten at work. Some gluten has formed in the starter, and the carbon dioxide is getting trapped inside the gluten network. (Be warned: when I recently made starter in a too-small container, I came home on the evening of Day Two to find my starter exploding out of the container.)

Evening feed

Water (70°F to 75°F)	½ cup	118 grams
Ripened starter	½ cup	100 grams
Organic rye flour	½ cup	55 grams
Bread flour (or all-purpose flour)	½ cup	60 grams

Put the water in a 1½-quart (or larger) container with a tight-fitting lid. Scoop out 100 grams (½ cup) of the ripened starter and add it to the container; discard the remaining ripened starter. Add the rye flour and bread flour and stir with a metal spoon to combine. Cover the container and set the starter in a warm place (approximately 75°F) for approximately 12 hours.

Days Three, Four, and Five

At this point, you switch from rye flour to whole-wheat flour because the yeast from the rye flour has already begun growing. I use a combination of whole-wheat flour instead of all bread flour because the whole-wheat flour contains natural yeast. So as the days go on and the yeast in my starter becomes more concentrated, I am gradually moving from yeast-containing grains to more refined bread flour (or all-purpose flour), which does not contain the natural yeast.

Morning feed

Water (70°F to 75°F)	½ cup	118 grams
Ripened starter	½ cup	100 grams
Organic whole-wheat flour	½ cup	60 grams
Bread flour (or all-purpose flour)	½ cup	60 grams

Put the water in a 1½-quart (or larger) container with a tight-fitting lid. Measure out 100 grams (½ cup) of the ripened starter and add it to the container; discard the remaining ripened starter. Add the whole-wheat flour and bread flour and stir with a metal spoon to combine. Cover the container and set the starter in a warm place (approximately 75°F) for approximately 12 hours.

Evening feed

Water (70°F to 75°F)	½ cup	118 grams
Ripened starter	½ cup	100 grams
Organic whole-wheat flour	½ cup	60 grams
Bread flour (or all-purpose flour)	½ cup	60 grams

Put the water in a 1½-quart (or larger) container with a tight-fitting lid. Measure out 100 grams (½ cup) of the ripened starter and add it to the container; discard the remaining ripened starter. Add the whole-wheat flour and bread flour and stir with a metal spoon to combine. Cover the container and set the starter aside at room temperature for approximately 12 hours.

Day Six

Your starter is now ready to use. From here out, refer to the feed schedule in Maintaining a Starter (below).

Float test

To test whether your starter is ready to use, fill a small bowl with water. Wet the fingers of one hand and use them to carefully pinch off a piece of the starter, taking care not to deflate the starter in the process. Place the starter in the water. If it floats, the starter is good to use. The reason it is floating is that the yeast has produced a sufficient amount of carbon dioxide. If the concentration of yeast has produced enough carbon dioxide to cause the starter to float, it is also high enough to leaven dough. If the starter sinks, feed it for a few more days, testing it every day, until it floats. This is the “float test.” I ask the bakers who work with me to make sure the starter passes the float test each time before adding it to dough.

Maintaining a starter

Now that you have built a starter, you have to maintain it, which means feeding it on a regular basis. If you are maintaining your starter just to have on hand to use someday, it is enough to feed it once a day. If you are actively baking with it or are getting ready to bake with it in the very near future, feed it twice a day. This ensures less bacteria and more active yeast in the starter, which results in a higher rise in your baked goods.

Morning maintenance feed

Water (70°F to 75°F)	⅔ cup	157 grams
Ripened starter	1 tablespoon	25 grams
Bread flour (or all-purpose flour)	1⅓ cups	160 grams

Put the water in a 1½-quart (or larger) container with a tight-fitting lid. Measure out 25 grams (1 tablespoon) of the ripened starter and add it to the container; discard the remaining ripened starter. Add the flour and stir with a metal spoon to combine. Cover the container and set the starter aside in a warm place (approximately 75°F) for approximately 12 hours.

Evening maintenance feed

Water (70°F to 75°F)	⅔ cup	157 grams
Ripened starter	1 tablespoon	25 grams
Bread flour (or all-purpose flour)	1⅓ cups	160 grams

Saving your starter

If you are unable to feed your starter because you are leaving town, put the ripened starter in the refrigerator until you return. Do not put just-fed starter in the refrigerator. Starter that was just fed has a low (or no) concentration of yeast; the yeast hasn’t had time to feed and grow. If you put just-fed starter in the refrigerator, when you remove the starter from the refrigerator, it may not come back to life. To prevent this from happening, put your starter in the refrigerator at its ripest point, when it is very active and bubbly.

When you are ready to resume a maintenance feeding schedule, remove the starter from the refrigerator and drain off any liquid that has formed on top. Resume feeding the starter twice a day using the feed routine for Maintaining a Starter (this page) until the yeast has concentrated enough that the starter passes the float test.

Wrapping Dough

After I have made any dough that I will be rolling out, I roll it between plastic wrap into a square. I’m pretty meticulous about this; the square is usually about 8 inches, and the corners of my dough block have distinct 90-degree angles. Starting with a squared-off block of dough sets you up to succeed in rolling out a sheet of dough with squared edges. When laminating, it is particularly important to start with an even, squared-off block of dough so that it wraps around the butter evenly.

To wrap dough this way, start by laying a long sheet of plastic wrap on your work surface. Use a plastic bowl scraper to scoop the dough out of the bowl onto the plastic in the center. Loosely fold the plastic over the dough, leaving a couple of inches of slack on both sides. Gently run a rolling pin over the dough into the slack to begin to flatten it out slightly. Take a second, long sheet of plastic wrap and lay it over the dough in the other direction, leaving a couple of inches of slack. Gently run the rolling pin in the direction of the slack created by the second sheet of plastic. Using kitchen shears, snip the plastic wrap near the corners to let the air escape. Run a rolling pin over the dough to create a roughly 8-inch, ½-inch-thick square, making sure to get the dough into the corners so that you have squared edges. If you are rolling the dough out round, such as for a classic round pie, roll the dough into a ½-inch-thick disk instead.