Techniques

IT COMES DOWN TO THIS: WITHOUT PROPER technique, it doesn’t matter how wonderful your flour is or that you’ll be baking your bread in a $40,000 deck oven. The result will be the same—a less than perfect loaf of bread. Furthermore, when you consider the fact that creating flavorful breads requires a time investment of anywhere from several hours to more than a day, it makes getting your technique right on the first try all the more important. I for one can vouch for the fact that it is not a feel-good moment when you spend a day developing a preferment, then several hours perfecting the dough, only to find out in the eleventh hour that you forgot to properly steam the oven prior to baking. And instead of finding a crispy crust on your bread, you discover a crust as crunchy as cotton balls.