Ingredients and Equipment

WHEN I FIRST BEGAN BAKING BREAD, I’D quickly look at the ingredients and make a list in my head of the tools I’d likely need, then jump right into mixing without much thought for what the ingredients did or how the equipment helped—or hurt—the bread baking process. I had no idea that the ingredients and equipment made a difference in the end result, and more to my surprise, none of the cookbooks I was using said all that much about them either. It wasn’t until I opened a cookbook on professional baking that I realized my mistake. It didn’t take more than a few minutes of flipping through the pages to realize just how important— and scientifically technical—using the right ingredients and equipment are to the bread-baking process. I learned in rapid fashion that in the world of baking, knowledge truly is power.