pat781•19d ago

A chat with my grandma about her old bread recipes

I was at my grandma's place last weekend and she pulled out this little box of recipe cards, all stained and soft at the edges. She pointed to one for a simple white loaf and said, 'We used to bake this with whatever flour we had, never weighed a thing.' It got me thinking about how I now fuss over exact grams and hydration percentages for my sourdough. Her bread fed a family through good and bad times without a single digital scale. It made me wonder if I'm overcomplicating the heart of it. Has anyone else found that going back to a simpler method changed your baking?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivanbell19d ago

My last loaf was so over-thought it came out of the oven looking sad. I probably stressed the gluten out with all my worrying.

nancyg1419d ago

Read a blog post about a baker who ditched his scale for a month, said his hands learned the dough better than any numbers.

jamie_webb6719d ago

That blog post about ditching the scale is right, your hands really do learn the feel of good dough.