The 7 Most Common Breadmaking Mistakes You’re Probably Making

Hi Bold Bakers, I heard from a lot of you
that you want to do more bread baking in 2020like sourdoughs, more no-knead doughs and
just other basic bread recipes.Now I am all about this because I love bread
making, but I thought it’s really importantbefore we get stuck into it that we cover
some of the 7 most common bread making mistakesso you don’t make them in the future.So let’s get started with number one.Weighing your ingredients accurately, now
this is really important because when it comesto bread making you want precision.You’ll know from my recipes I do cups, grams
and ounces because I come from Europe andwe use grams and ounces.The thing about grams and ounces is they’re
way more precise, so get yourself an inexpensiveweighing scale so you always have it for bread
making.When measuring with cups your volume can vary
and with bread making we want to be like reallyprecise.So tip number two, I say this often, don’t
let salt and yeast come in direct contactwith each other.When you’re putting your ingredients in
the bowl put salt on one side of the bowland yeast on the other side.You can mix them in with the flour and then
you can mix them together.Just make sure that they don’t go in one
on top of the other because the salt willkill the yeast.Tip number three, inaccurately adding too
much water.Now this is a common mistake and I’ll tell
you how to avoid it.When you’re mixing up your liquid, only
add in enough liquid so that your dough formsand cleans the bottom of the bowl.So at the end you’ve got a clean bowl and
a ball of dough, you don’t want it to betoo soggy then your dough will be really difficult
to work with.Tip number four, not covering your dough at
all stages now this is really important.If you didn’t know, dough and air are actually
not best friends, you want to keep it coveredwith cling wrap or some kind of cling film
and then put a tea towel over it, you don’twant your dough to ever be exposed to just
like the air because your dough can form askin.If your dough forms a skin it can be really
difficult to proof and it can ruin your breaddough.So from the moment you make your dough until
you’re shaping it at the very end I alwayswant you to keep it covered.Tip number 5 inadequately proofing your dough,
now some people get a little worried of proofing,they don’t know what to look for and I’m
gonna tell you.So what you do is you push your dough, and
if it bounces back kind of slowly then it’sproofed and it’s ready to go into the oven.If you proof your dough for too long and you
don’t have time to get it into the oven,the end result is that your dough will be
really flat so you just want to be sure thatyou don’t over proof it.Another sign of over proofed dough is that
if you peel the cling wrap and the dough sticksto the cling wrap, that is over proofed.Tip number 6 failure to create steam in an
oven now bread loves steam and I’ll tellyou why.It gives it a lovely shiny crust for one and
it makes it really chewy so for the first20 minutes or so of baking you want a lot
of steam in there, so there are two ways youcan do it.You can put a baking tray in the bottom and
pour hot water into it and that will createsteam as your bread bakes, or you can get
a spray bottle that’s just for water andyou can spray the dough and spray the oven
then shut it really fast and that will alsocreate steam.So those are two really good options.Tip number 7 do not let the heat escape during
baking, now I can’t stress how importantthis is because bread loves a hot oven.So my rule of thumb is for the first 20 minutes,
stay away from that door, don’t open it,just peek through the window and let the bread
do it’s thing.In the first few minutes that your bread goes
into the oven it creates this thing calledoven spring and it makes your bread pop and
rise really nicely and if you open that door,it ain’t gonna happen so just leave it be.Also if you open the door too often you’ll
end up with a soft crust and you don’t wantthat.Now that you know the 7 most common bread
making mistakes go forward and make killerbread.Thank you so much for watching I hope you
thought this was useful and stay tuned formore bread recipes to come.I’ll see you back here really soon for more
Bigger Bolder Baking.