Breads

It's possible to freeze carbs and enjoy them later in a not-rock-hard state.

Learn how to tell when homemade breads are fully cooked with these tips.

Not to be dramatic, but the results were kind of mind-blowing.

No awkwardly cut foil strips required.

Use this clever folding trick to get the parchment paper just right.

The only thing you need is already in your refrigerator!

Here's why it's such a smart tip.

It's time to step up your bread-and-butter game.

Knowing when you can stop kneading the dough is among the more mysterious aspects of baking bread. Sure, it’s no longer a wobbly mess of bubble-gummy dough, but is it really done? To find out, there are ways to tell whether the dough is ready after kneading it for 10-12 minutes by hand or 8-10 minutes in a mixer. Here are a few clues to look for. The point of kneading dough is to strengthen the gluten, which are the stringy bands of proteins that give bread its structure and texture.

Prettier loaves ahead!

The answer depends on how long your summer rolls need storing.

I don’t bake with yeast all that often, but I always reach for the packets of dry yeast when I do. But what about those little cakes of fresh yeast, the ones professional bakers are always talking about? It was time to find out more about fresh (or cake) yeast, and see what the fuss was all about. How is it different from dried yeast, is it easy to use, and would breads made from fresh yeast taste better?

Fresh biscuits like our Bacon-Cheddar Biscuits are so easy to pull together and take so little time to bake, they make an ideal component to a weeknight meal. In fact, we’ve been known to make them the centerpiece of the meal. Here are a few of our favorite excuses.1. Topped with Sauce – Many of the same sauces we put over pasta are fantastic over biscuits as well. We particularly love creamy ones like this Mushroom Sauce.2.

You likely already everything you need.

You'll be blown away by this one.

You'll wish you knew this one sooner.

This might become your new favorite way of making garlic bread.

We promise, this trick won't get stale!

Stuffed bagels? Sign us up!

Waking up super early for work can be challenging, especially if you don't have a delicious breakfast planned. This buttery muffin trick fixes all of that!

This trick for making soup toppers is so unbelievably easy!

Shannon Sharna explains how to braid challah bread in four different styles.

It’s the easiest way to get flavor into *all* the nooks and crannies.

It works with chocolate chips, too.

Get that professional-looking split top.

An overnight rest is good for more than just no-knead bread!

If you've never worked with yeast before or, like me, haven't been successful in proofing your yeast, here's everything you need to know about getting started with dry yeast.

Take a break from baking bread while the weather is hot!

I've been doing this for 15 years.

Our team is all-in on sourdough. Want to join us? It's the best baking adventure of all, and everything you need to get started is right here.

Brioche is great, but not when I'm cooking for a crowd.

If puff pastry isn't working for you, it may not be properly thawed.

Goodbye banana bread, hello sour cherry chocolate chunk bread!

A ball of store-bought pizza dough can help you make dinner. On busy weeknights, its versatility and convenience just can’t be beat. And while you can obviously make great pizza from pizza dough, the truth is that you can make a whole lot of great things beyond pizza from the dough. Here are five ingenious ways to turn a one-pound ball of pizza dough into dinner. A sandwich is one of the easiest dinners around.

This smart tip totally surprised me — and it 100% works.

This trick is a total game-changer.

We grew up on bagels, and taking a bite of that warm, ultra-chewy bread is still one of our favorite food experiences. Ask any good bagel baker and they’ll tell you that the key to that chewy crust and slightly dense interior is boiling the bagels before baking. The question is, why?It feels very counter-intuitive to most of us to throw bread in boiling water. The point of most bread baking, after all, is to let water evaporate and dry out the interior to a certain extent.

Lately, we’ve been getting in the habit of buying an extra baguette or two when we’re at the store just to throw in the freezer for later. It’s extremely handy to have bread ready to thaw and use when we need it – baguettes in particular! Here’s why:Because they’re so skinny, baguettes thaw very quickly – which is a definite bonus when it’s dinner time and we realize that we just ran out of bread!

Bagels with cream cheese are a weekend treat for us, and if we’re feeling particularly generous toward ourselves, we buy a baker’s dozen for munching all weekend long. This inevitably leads to a few slightly stale bagels left in the bottom of the bag come Monday morning. But not like that’s a bad thing! What do you do with leftover bagels during the week?Here are a few ideas for using up those few remaining bagels:1.

From the very beginning, one of the things that we’ve loved about the no-knead bread is how versatile it is. We can make it into a gorgeous and crusty round-loaf, a sandwich loaf, and yes, even a baguette. Here’s how we do it.Since the no-knead bread is so loose and sticky, we find that it’s much easier to work with it if we can refrigerate the dough for at least an hour beforehand. We often make the dough one day, refrigerate it overnight, and then make our loaves the next.

We were so happy to see all the requests for bread-making tutorials during How To Month! Making bread, and all its delicious variations, is a favorite weekly ritual at our house and we love it when other people get the bug. Here are our top bread-making tutorials (so far!) rounded up in one place, all for you.We have all your bread-making bases covered here. There are tutorials on making a few different kinds of bread, from the popular no-knead bread to a more traditional artisan boule.

The Internet is rife with ideas for using Mason jars, but I rarely encounter new ways to repurpose the metal rings or bands. So I was instantly intrigued by a photo that has been making the rounds on Facebook and Pinterest, involving the use of Mason jar rings to make muffins or cupcakes. Would this really work? First I traced the photo back to the blog Lessons Line Upon Line, where this trick was used to make banana muffins — and then I had to try it for myself.

Forget worrying about keeping paper muffin cups stocked.

The Kitchn’s Baking School Day 12: All about basic yeast breads. Join The Kitchn’s Baking School: Sign up and see all The Kitchn’s Baking School assignments A loaf of homemade bread is a beautiful thing. Soft, springy, and fresh — it’s perfect for slathering with some nut butter or turning into amazing sandwiches. Bread baking is a craft for sure, but something you certainly can (and should try to) do at home.

If you’re the cook who jumps at the chance to add any and all things coconut to a recipe, this is how to bring it to your next batch of muffins. We’re starting with our basic muffin recipe and giving it a boost of rich, tropical flavor and a bit of crunch from a handful of toasted coconut chips. Swirl these toasted chips through the batter for extra texture in every bite, and don’t be shy when topping the muffins with extra. You can never have too much coconut!

For a generation of cooks who grew up listening to the gospel of Good Eats, Alton Brown’s tricks and tips that bring scientific thinking to the kitchen are like gold. His examination and improvement of staple dishes help everyone think about just how we can improve every dish. And we found out that on his website, he takes banana bread to task, improving the classic quick bread with one simple trick.

The beauty of Twitter is that anyone can ask the kind of question that really makes you think — and sometimes they even come beautifully illustrated with an animated video. Such was the case this week when user Dave posited, “If baguettes could move, how would they move?” and requested to hear reasoning.

I’ve been nursing a sourdough starter for well over a year now, ever since a friend gifted me a portion of hers. If you must know, his name is Mr. Funny Pants and he’s the closest thing I’ve had to a pet since my hamster died when I was 9. So I care for him quite a bit. So when my husband and I began to plan our move from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina, Mr.

So you might’ve heard that there’s a wedding this weekend. Despite the fact that America legit fought a war to escape the British monarchy, seemingly every television channel that isn’t SyFy is breathlessly counting the minutes until Prince Charles walks Meghan Markle down the aisle and straight into the Royal Family.

When it comes to sourdough starter and baking sourdough bread, misconceptions and mistakes abound. We’re here to clear up some of the long-standing myths surrounding sourdough. Are any of these myths lodged in your brain? Time for debunking. Throw some flour and water in a bucket, and voila! A few days later you’ll have a bubbling, tangy-smelling sourdough starter all ready to use in bread. Not in my kitchen.

Baking is applied microbiology. That may seem like an odd way to look at it, but it is only a modest exaggeration. All yeast breads and sourdoughs owe their shapes and textures to the actions of microbes, living creatures that are microscopic in size and typically consist of just a single cell. Despite its size, yeast is a powerhouse of an ingredient.

One of the most important discoveries we made while developing and refining the recipes in Modernist Bread is that yeast is among the most resilient life-forms we’ve ever encountered (and we encounter many in our lab, which we share with a bunch of biologists). As it turns out, freezing temperatures do not kill all the yeast and lactic acid bacteria in a preferment or starter. Some die, but most remain dormant while frozen.

Starter. Sourdough starter. Levain. Starter sponge. Mother sponge. Biga. Chef. Poolish. You’ll hear many names for the stuff that makes your bread rise tossed about in recipes. What do they mean? And what exactly is the difference between them all? All of these names refer to types of preferments, a mixture of flour, water, and leavening agent (like yeast), combined in advance of making a bread dough. In the preferment, the water hydrates the flour, and fermentation reactions begin.

Summer rolls are as fun to eat as they are to make, and can be filled with your heart’s desire. Less heavy than traditional sandwiches but more substantial than salads, we’ve dubbed them the sandwich for salad-lovers. Summer rolls actually taste better with more vegetables and they are way easier to eat on the go (say, at a picnic or party) than even the best salads. Here’s our guide to making the most of summer rolls now.

When scones are at their best, they can be life-changing. Anything that delicate, buttery, and oh-so-flaky can make a transcendent moment out of the five minutes it takes for you to eat it. I know people who won’t touch scones, though, because all they’ve ever had were the dense, puck-like ones that are all too often found in cafes and coffee shops. Our recipe for buttery, tender scones is truly a revelation and will make a believer out of the most skeptical.

You may want to consider doubling your next batch of biscuits.

A few years ago I learned a disturbing fact about bagels: In 2008, 1,979 people went to the emergency room due to a BRI (bagel-related injury), according to the Wall Street Journal. Apparently chicken-related injuries were more common (with 3,463 visits), but this stat still really messed with my head. All those people had their mornings ruined because they lost the battle against their everything bagel. Maybe make everything bagel bread instead?

Latkes get all the attention this time of year — as they should, latkes are awesome — but another Hanukkah treat has been gaining in popularity stateside in recent years. Put your hands together for the jelly doughnut. What the two have in common symbolically is also the ingredient that makes both so delicious: oil.

Whether it’s the hot oil or the cleanup, there’s certainly some work involved with frying at home, but if the freshest yeasted doughnuts are what you’re after, then making them at home — even if you only do it once a year — is worth the effort. To make frying doughnuts an experience you want to repeat, there are a few key mistakes to avoid. Here’s what you need to steer clear of for success.

It’s hard to beat the smell of gingerbread cookies wafting through the air as they bake. In fact, it’s arguably a solid reason to bake them in the first place (although it definitely doesn’t hurt if they taste great, too). Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, these cookies have just the right balance of sweet and spice. Here are a few tricks of the trade to make the best gingerbread cookies yet — and the mistakes that can lead to subpar results.