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If you are just starting out with bread baking you are probably thinking whether you need to buy bread machine or a kitchen mixer to help you with your new hobby.
I certainly get asked this question nearly every time I run my Introduction to Bread Baking Course and I usually answer: Well, it depends!
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This is really easy and fairly simple recipe for soft cinnamon pretzels. This is the american version (with UK measurements), which is soft and fluffy, unlike the german style traditional hard pretzels.
I got into making pretzels when I tasted the most amazing cinnamon pretzel from a street stall in London. The taste is just so delicious, sweet and slightly chewy. Althought there is a bit of preparation involved, it's pretty easy recipe to make.
We normally bake a batch of pretzels on Sunday and it's great fun to bake with children too. This recipe is for cinnamon pretzels, which is the simpliest versions of filling (or toppings if you like), but you can swap it for chocolate, peanut butter or any other topping you fancy.
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Do you think that healthy food is boring? Not very interesting? Or even bland?
That's what I thought and certainly back in the 80s when I was growing up, healthy food either wasn't available or when it was, it tasted like dry cardboard.
A lot of things have changed since then, so when I recently had the opportunity to work on a Healthy Business Retreat with my friend Claire, I was very happy to be introduced to a whole range of tasty treats. And I'm glad to say that healthy food can indeed be very tasty!
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Recently I've been asked to come up with a traditional sweet bread recipe for Christmas. The challenge was to come up with a recipe for a special friend staying with my student's family over Christmas. Their friend is originally from Slovak Republic, which send me on search to find out the really traditional bakes from this particular country.
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It's been a long time coming, but finally after many years of bread baking and trying different bread baking equipment, I've put together the minimum you need to get started baking bread at home.
Over the years, I have been asked what's my favourite piece of bread making equipment and what I could not be without. So, here is my take on the Bread Baking Starter Kit:
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Here at Cocoa & Heart, our Sourdough Bread Baking Courses are amongst our most popular bread making workshops we run. People new to sourdough making and those enquiring about booking are naturally often keen to learn more about what makes sourdough bread so different to any other breads.
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When I run my sourdough bread baking courses, I often get asked criptical questions from my curious students. The answers to some of the questions like: 'Is sourdough bread gluten free ?' initially seem very obvious, but strangely enough when you dig a little deeper the answer is not that clear cut.
So, first of all to satisfy your curiosity to know whether sourdough bread is gluten free, well, of course it depends on what type of flour you use! Since it's very difficult to bake a true sourdough bread from completely gluten free flour, traditional sourdough breads are not gluten free.
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Based on my 18 years of experience of baking bread for my family, friends and customers, here are my favourite tips on getting each loaf perfect every time.
It’s interesting how people are often very confident when baking cakes and bakes, but when it comes to baking bread people think it’s some sort of black art, where everything needs to be just spot on and all measured perfectly.
To some extent that’s true, but once you master a few basic things, bread baking is actually a lot more forgiving than making cakes.
