People often assume that we must have a treasure trove of secret recipes for our breads. In fact, we willingly share our recipes with anyone who is interested, but the real trick to making our breads is in the process. When you're dealing with a living thing like bread dough, there is no painting by number. A printed recipe gives you, at most, only a very basic outline of the many things that you need to be attentive to as you go through the process of making bread.

If you're interested in advancing your bread skills, or are hung up on a certain issue with your bread making, come by and visit us at the bakery in Middlesex. We love to show people what we do--there are no secrets here!

Until you get a chance to visit us, here are a couple of tips that we find helpful for people who are experienced with home baking, but are still working on perfecting artisan breads.

One of the most important techniques that we employ at the bakery (even though we have a machine mixer that could mix 300 lbs. of dough for 30 minutes if we wanted it to), is called an autolyse. This is the French term for giving the dough a rest. It is the way bakers did things before the days of mixers and it actually yields better results than an extended kneading period does. To do a proper autolyse, mix up a dough with all the flour your recipe calls for and just 90% of the total water amount called for. Leave out the salt, leavening agent, and 10% of the water. Incorporate this just enough so that there are no more dry clumps of flour (it will still be shaggy and not particularly stretchy). Cover this with a bowl and let it sit for 20 min. When you come back to the dough after the autolyse, you will find that in this short time, the water has absorbed into the flour and the dough is much more pliable than it first was... and you didn't even sweat to make that happen! Now you are set up for employing the next two tips.


One of the critical characteristics of a good artisan bread is an interior (or "crumb") that is moist and has irregularly sized holes in it (we say "an open crumb"). The single biggest thing that you can do to get this kind of crumb is to make a dough that is much wetter than most recipes call for. After the autolyse step that we described above, you can slowly add the remaining water along with the salt and leavening (a starter, preferably). Keep on adding small amounts of water while kneading the dough in between additions. Don't be afraid to add even more water than your recipe calls for. To achieve the kind of crumb that we're after, you want to end up with a dough that, when put into a bowl, will flatten out rather than doming up. When you have achieved this level of "hydration," knead it just until it is smooth and no wet spots are visible. Now you're ready for the next step.


For this step to work properly, you want your dough/room temperatures and leavening amounts to be set so that the total rising time that you'll need will be between three and four hours. During this long, slow rising time, a wet dough needs to be turned, or folded. This should not be a punching down like some recipes call for. The folding process is really an extension of the kneading process. It's a passive method of dough development (like the autolyse is) because it builds strength through a combination of your work and the work of all the microorganisms that are thriving in the dough. We fold our doughs by essentially turning them inside out. We take the sides and fold them to the middle completely, until the mass of dough can be turned over in a tight ball. The first fold should be done 15 min. after mixing. Thereafter, the folds can be gradually spaced out as the fermentation continues to do the work for you. By the end of the process, you will have done 4 to 6 folds depending on how wet your dough was, and with each fold your dough will get stronger. By the end of this process, you will have a dough that has increased in volume and is domed on the top from the increased strength imparted by the folds. About 45 minutes after the last fold, it will be ready for shaping.

Once again, we are happy to show you some of the above processes in action at the bakery. Go ahead and try these tips and observe the differences!