Make-Ahead Bread Recipes for Holiday Entertaining (2024)

FAQs

What are 4 key things to remember when making bread? ›

Butter or Olive Oil Brush: Brush softened butter or olive oil atop the loaf before baking to add flavor and color. Milk Bath: Brushing a loaf with milk before baking gives the baked bread a tender, golden crust. For a sweet bread recipe, sprinkle with sugar if desired.

Topping bread dough with seeds and grains is a simple and effective way to increase the nutrition, flavor, and texture in a baked loaf of bread.

Rather than placing the dough in the refrigerator overnight, leave it covered on the counter for 1 to 4 hours until it's ready to bake. Since the dough is proofed at room temperature, I find using the poke test a very effective way to tell when the bread dough is ready for the oven.

In this episode of the Stella Culinary School Podcast we kick off our bread baking lecture series with a lesson on the four ingredients needed to make bread. We discuss the science behind flour, water, yeast and salt and how it will affect your overall bread dough recipe.

For successful baked goods, add slightly less olive oil than butter. When adjusting recipes: Use three parts olive oil to four parts butter. In other words, if a recipe calls for four tablespoons of butter, use three tablespoons of olive oil.

Butter is considered a solid fat because it is solid at room temperature and oil is considered a liquid fat because it's liquid at room temperature. Because of this, you can't rely on oil to provide any leavening help in baked goods, which can result in a denser texture.

Best Oils for Baking

Choosing vegetable oil is the best option for baking moist, delicious baked goods. Canola oil, the most common vegetable oil used in baking, doesn't add a strong flavor. It allows your cake's flavor will shine through while still achieving a moist texture.

A small amount of steam during the last few minutes of baking or as soon as you take your bread out of the oven can give a nice shine to the surface of bread dough. Here is where that spray bottle of water comes in handy. Spritz the bread lightly and watch the surface develop a nice sheen.

Why do you spray water when baking bread? ›

Wetting the dough causes the surface to steam. Covering it traps the moisture. This partnership stops the bread from drying out on the surface in the hot air of the oven and forming a premature crust. Your bread rises more and produces a richer colour, becoming glossy on the surface.

Why Score the Bread? Scoring is generally done after the bread's finally rise and just before the loaves go in the oven. These intentional splits give the bread more room for their final rise in the oven without splitting the carefully closed seams. Slashing can also be done for purely decorative reasons.

You can, and I actually recommend this. Letting the dough sit in the fridge for a while develops flavor and makes for a better texture. I make my bread dough and then through it into the fridge in a glass container and let it sit in there for 4–5 days.

So, just give it a few minutes to take the chill off, and you should be good to go! I bake right out of the fridge from an overnight proof, no warming at all. It scores so easily and I get great oven spring. I always bake straight out of an overnight final proof in the fridge.

Putting your dough, whether yeasted or sourdough, in the fridge will help it to develop a better flavour and texture. The longer the dough ferments the more chance of bacteria and enzymes getting to work and unlocking the flavours in the wheat.

For a basic loaf of bread, all it takes is flour, water, salt and raising agent – usually yeast (wild or store-bought). As with anything else, you'll get the best results if you work with the best quality ingredients. When buying your ingredients, look for flour that is high in protein.

The most important factors to consider when making bread include product characteristics, choice of raw materials, dough processing, nutrition, health education and training, types of grain, yeast, baking methods, chemical composition, nutritional values, bread quality, main ingredients, gluten development, food safety ...