
A scheduling tool for bread baking - catacombs
http://www.breadscheduler.com/
======
juanbyrge
I have been baking sourdough for 2+ years and I don't think people should take
the timing too seriously. Yes it's good to loosely follow a schedule but if
you don't the bread will still turn out fine. I don't think I've ever followed
the exact same schedule twice. A few times I flat out forgot about the dough
and shaped it hours after I was supposed to, and it still came out amazing.
Sourdough is very forgiving. The most important thing in my opinion is mix it
thoroughly in the beginning and to do the stretch and folds properly so the
dough has strength and can hold it's shape for the later bulk rising.

~~~
etrautmann
As a beginner, I find a tool like this useful for understanding the general
schedule and a visual depiction of the steps required, without taking the
precise timing too seriously

~~~
juanbyrge
Definitely as a beginner it helps to follow a schedule and start to notice
some patterns. As you make bread more and more you start to rely on more
visual and tactile signals. For instance, I know that the levain is ready when
it appears 'bubbly' enough, and the stretching and folding is done when the
dough is 'tough' enough, and that the bulk fermentation is complete when the
dough has approximately doubled in size.

This is a great beginner's guide that I have shared with many folks:
[https://www.theperfectloaf.com/beginners-sourdough-
bread/](https://www.theperfectloaf.com/beginners-sourdough-bread/). After some
time I have settled on theperfectloaf's 'best sourdough' recipe, which has a
higher hydration.

~~~
etrautmann
Thanks! I'll give this one a shot too.

------
jwr
Or you could also learn how to make mixed 4/3 rye/wheat sourdough with a
natural starter, which requires no scheduling at all. Just mix it in the
morning and put it in the oven some time in the late afternoon/evening.

I've been doing it for years and it's the only kind of bread that I can make
on a regular basis. It's something you can actually do daily, not an
additional hobby.

Ingredients:

* 400g full-grain rye flour

* 300g wheat flour

* 10-15g salt

* 600ml water

* 50-80g levain starter (rye based)

mix, wait 6-8h, bake at 210C for 1h05.

This is a very popular kind of bread in Poland, while I found that in the US
people don't really know what to do with full-grain rye flour. I've read books
that said it can only be used to make dark pumpernickel breads, and I never
found the recipe above (or similar) in any bread-baking books I've read.

Also, the rye starter is fairly stable, forgiving and easy to maintain in a
fridge.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Most of my breads use a mixture of rye and wheat with a wheat sourdough. I'll
have to give the rye sourdough a try.

Finding rye at retail stores in the USA is very difficult. I have to order
mine directly from a mill.

~~~
scruple
We do rye and wheat sourdough at home, as well. Prior to the lockdowns I had
no problem finding 5 pound bags of wheat flour and 3 pound bags of rye flour.
Now, though... Can't even find it online.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Huh. I was just at the local Asian grocery. Piles of bags in the back.

~~~
scruple
I honestly hadn't thought to look for it at any of our nearby Asian grocery
stores. We used to frequent our local H Mart, Zion Market, and 99 Ranch, but
have been sticking to our more immediate grocery store for the past 4 weeks,
or so. I'm due to restock kimchi soon anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

------
arkanciscan
Unlike the rest of the readers of HackerNews I'm not an expert on breadmaking.
So, to me this looks like a very cool resource that could make me feel
confident enough to try. It also looks real nice, and plays well on mobile!
Nice work!

------
jerzyt
For those of us working in tech, it can be extremely satisfying to bake your
own bread. I did that a few years ago, starting from scratch, making my own
sourdough starter, and baking daily. It's rediscovering what a typical family
did centuries ago. Your starter becomes a pet. I had to stop it due to a lot
of travel, but I still have a packet of my starter vacuum sealed and frozen.
Maybe I should try again. Travel certainly won't be an issue for a while.

~~~
jfim
Not to forget the amazing smell of freshly baked bread!

~~~
jerzyt
Yes. My bread never lasted long enough to reach the room temp.

------
mikedilger
I hope this works for somebody, but I'm going to have to critique the whole
concept of "timing' when baking sourdough bread.

After years of baking sourdough I find that I cannot predict precisely the
timing. I have to judge the dough at each step and not proceed until it is
ready. This is especially true in that I like trying new things, making
tweaks, fermenting at different temperatures, and this alters the timing. The
timing depends highly on temperature, where in the refresh cycle the starter
is at (still rising? fallen and foamy?), but also very much on your particular
starter. Some starters run slow (especially newly created ones). Others are
fast. Using someone else's timing just never seemed to work for me. Early on
when I started baking sourdough I made some absolute bricks because I followed
the timing that the recipe specified, even though their descriptions of the
dough seemed very different to what I was seeing. And if they said two hours,
then eight hours must certainly be enough... but it wasn't enough. Yes, it
really can be off by that far (especially with a new weak sourdough starter
that wasn't refreshed properly).

Nonetheless, you have to have some sort of plan. Turns out that I can always
make it work within a certain set of bounds if I am home all day on some given
day. And that has driven me into the following pattern:

1\. Remove sourdough starter from refrigerator the night before, and refresh.

2\. Build dough in the mid morning with active starter

3\. Bulk ferment (with stretches and folds) in a proofer until it is ready

4\. Pre shape. Then shape. Then refrigerate in bags.

5\. Bake the loaves (I always do two boules) early the next morning.

This is by no means the only pattern that can be made to work, but it's robust
and flexible enough for anything I've ever thrown at it.

~~~
joshvm
One thing that really made a massive difference for me was making a proofing
box. It's a large EPS container (similar to the ones that market sellers use)
with a seedling heating mat inside. I control it with a cheap (like < $10)
thermostat from Amazon. It maintains around 26C quite easily and is pretty
efficient. I've never bothered to check the accuracy of the thermostat, but I
imagine it's within a degree or two. You can also use it for fermentation,
Noma have instructions on how to build one. My only suggestion is don't do
what I did and go nuts on the size. You can get away with a much smaller box
(e.g. I bake 500g loaves mostly, and I use a 4L graduated polycarbonate
container - it's dwarfed by the size of the box).

Temperature control makes an enormous difference. I live in a cold house,
hence why I built this. To make things worse, my kitchen has marble worktops.
So if you use cold or tepid water and then knead, you end up cooling the dough
even more on the counter. It's a bit different with Tartine because you don't
really knead the dough, but still - yeast is optimally active around 25C or so
and if you have to wait for the dough to come up to temperature, that can
easily add an hour or two. So you can control this by measuring the temp of
your water and using a climate controlled box (which costs about a tenth of
one of those pop-up Broder ones).

I do agree about starter refresh cycles though, as well as what hydration you
put in, how much you put in, what exactly the flour is. I don't climate
control my starter except during the winter when it sits by the boiler.

Most of the time my routine is identical to yours. Feed the starter overnight
Friday, make the dough Saturday morning and bulk it during the day.
Refrigerate overnight and bake on Sunday.

Strongly recommend watching Chad do it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4dyWZZVeWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4dyWZZVeWI)

It answered a lot of questions I had from reading the book.

~~~
atomi
I love this idea of a proofing box with temp control using a heated mat.
Thanks for sharing it!

~~~
joshvm
FYI the basic design is actually within the preview on Google Books (page 47).

[https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Noma_Guide_to_Fer...](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Noma_Guide_to_Fermentation.html?id=-iJ9DwAAQBAJ)

I recommend adding a wire rack so your container doesn't sit directly on the
mat as well.

------
guidedlight
I’m from Australia, and this site uses a weird imperial mix and metric
measurements.

Weights are in grams, but temperature is in fahrenheit (I think, doesn’t
actually say).

Please use one measurement system make it consistent, as well as switchable.
Thanks.

~~~
rmetzler
I‘m from Germany. Thanks for having ingredients in grams and making it
switchable. But how much is 425°F in Celsius? :)

~~~
jjgreen
Easy way to remember: 32F = 0C, -40F = -40C, and the relation is linear

------
fxtentacle
I feel like that website is slightly counter-productive, because it puts a
very strong emphasis on timing, whereas for producing high-quality bread,
things like dough handling techniques, dough and oven humidity, or baking
temperature have a much stronger effect than timing.

~~~
crispyambulance
You're right that it's important to observe the dough and modify timing as
needed.

I think, however, that for many folks who are trying out baking sourdough for
the first time, it helps them a lot to start with a fully detailed recipe that
includes timing. The instructions on that bread scheduler will AT LEAST get
you to the right ball park (assuming you use similar flour to the
instructions).

For those starting this out, I would recommend following one of these detailed
recipes, do it several times or more, and that way develop some sense of what
factors to tweak.

Taking a closer look at the instructions, I see they're not emphasizing dough
temperature during bulk ferment. Household kitchen temperatures can vary quite
widely and this temperature is an important factor in how long the dough takes
to ferment. That's why it's valuable to press the dough with your finger and
gauge readiness prior to shaping steps.

~~~
fxtentacle
I believe what most newcomers will want to bake is not a large bread - because
then you're stuck with it if it turns out so-so - but rather smaller bread
rolls. Those are based on instant yeast and prepared rather swiftly, so then
the kitchen temperature becomes a major success/failure factor.

------
sampo
I have found that a minimal version of no-knead bread is already good:

700ml flour, 350ml water, 1 to 1.5 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp instant yeast. Mix in
bowl, cover, let stand for 12-16 hours. Put dutch oven in oven, heat to 250C.
Take out the hot dutch oven, sprinkle some bran or flour or cornmeal on the
bottom, scrape dough from the bowl into the dutch oven, sprinkle some bran on
top. Bake 30min with lid, remove lid, bake 20min more.

I am sure extra steps (autolyse) and extra work (folding, shaping) would
improve it, but even this minimal procedure makes tasty bread.

~~~
rand_r
Does the bread rise while it's baking in the oven? I've tried to do this no-
knead recipe and the bread came out pretty flat.

~~~
sampo
The dough bubbles and more than doubles in volume in the bowl when the yeast
is slowly working. If you wait too little, it hasn't risen yet. If you wait
too long, it will rise and then start to flatten back. You can see this from
the sides of the bowl, that the dough has reached a higher level earlier, and
started to contract, but left some marks up to the maximum where it was. I
guess the timing depends on how much yeast you added exactly, and the
temperature in your kitchen. You don't need to get it perfectly right, but it
you wait way too little or way too long I guess the bread comes out dense.

You just scrape the risen dough from the bowl into the dutch oven with minimal
disturbance, so you don't disturb the air bubbles too much. And your oven and
the dutch oven need to be hot at this point, so the dough goes right into a
hot oven, the heat expands the air bubbles and gives you some oven spring.

Other recipes make you sprinkle flour on a working surface, fold and shape the
dough into a loaf, and then leave it, giving the shaped loaf a second rise.

------
nyxtom
This may be the first recipe list I’ve ever seen that doesn’t include a 20
page essay on family history followed by half a dozen ads. I like the design

~~~
Breza
I totally agree! Most recipe sites don't focus on what I want: recipes. I'm a
pretty good home cook and I've been trying to get better at timing. Getting
all elements of a big dinner party ready at the same time is tricky. This
website is terrific. I wish this approach were applied to more complex multi-
dish meals.

------
esquire_900
I've recently been making very low effort bread, which takes less then 10
minutes overall, and is (in my novice eyes) exactly the same as bread that has
been kneaded with the "proper" schedule. Perhaps one of the experts here can
shine a light on why something simple like below creates (almost) the same
quality as a mixture that has been processed with much more effort?

\- Put everything in a bowl, and mix it until it's consistent. Usually takes
2-ish minutes. I find a simple, non-sharp knife to work best. \- Cover it with
cloth and let it sit for 12-20 hours depending on the mixture and temperature.
\- Get the mixture out, en cover with flower on all sides. Don't knead or
overly touch (it will lose volume). \- Preheat the oven with an iron cast over
pot, once it's hot (250C), take out the pot, put in the mixture, and put on
the lid. Halfway into the baking time, take off the lid.

~~~
lqet
This is exactly my recipe, which I have been using for 5 years now with great
success. It's foolproof. The bread will usually look like shit after you dump
it into the iron cast pot, but will have a nice and smooth and tight surface
after the first baking round with the lid on.

The bread will look like this: [https://holycowvegan.net/wp-
content/uploads/2018/02/no-knead...](https://holycowvegan.net/wp-
content/uploads/2018/02/no-knead-sourdough-bread-7.jpg)

If you stop the baking without the lid sooner, it will look like this:
[https://joyfoodsunshine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/dutch...](https://joyfoodsunshine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/dutch-oven-no-knead-bread-recipe-1.jpg)

------
axaxs
Thanks for this. I'm extremely blessed to have a wife that enjoys making
bread, and makes the best sourdough I've ever tasted. It's mostly in her head
but from the notes I've pieced together it seems close to the weekday
sourdough. Bread is so easy to make and so delicious if you have patience, I
really hope this leads to more people making bread. Store bought tastes like
paper in comparison.

Protip to any future breadmakers: buy a cast iron Dutch oven. It's the real
game changer.

~~~
01100011
I've been wondering about that. The last time I baked bread was 10+ years ago.
At the time, I got professional results with just a pizza stone and a spray
bottle of water. The water replaced the steam oven and did a great job of
gelatinizing the crust. Unfortunately I don't think I can get a dutch oven
during the lockdown.

~~~
axaxs
So, my wife has been making bread a while and it was always 'chewy'. Don't get
me wrong, it was delicious, but there was no crust to the bread. After
researching, the consensus was that the lid helped keep the steam in and brown
the bread. You only leave it on for half the bake, typically. But the
difference between bread on a stone and bread in a proper enclosure is truly
night and day.

Thinking through not having access to a proper dutch oven, water would
probably work but I'd think you'd still need a cover of sorts, even if
makeshift foil.

------
moultano
This is really cool, but to complete these recipes successfully on schedule
you'd have to account for the ambient temperature of your house and adjust
accordingly. A rise overnight at 65 degrees is going to take ~twice as long as
one during the day at 75.

~~~
gdubs
I’m pretty new to bread making (like many I’m sure) but today realized I could
use the oven to help rise, as our house is kept cool. Basically turn on the
oven at its lowest setting for a few minutes and then turn it off, and let
your dough rise in the warmer atmosphere of the oven.

~~~
pfranz
If your oven has an incandescent light, often that's just warm enough. Just
leave it on. Same with gas ovens with a lit pilot. I recently noticed mine has
a "proof mode" I had been meaning to test out.

------
sneak
This is _amazing_! Great juice on the animations, the halving checkbox is a
lovely touch.

You might want to proofread the recipe steps, check the temps update with
metric/imperial switches, and add a TLS redirect.

------
dthul
Are the amounts on the website broken or am I slightly dense? The "Overnight
Weekend Bread" recipe
([http://www.breadscheduler.com/#/recipe/5bac85f720211052e0b70...](http://www.breadscheduler.com/#/recipe/5bac85f720211052e0b703f1))
instructs you to create 500g-550g of levain (the amounts in the overview and
the step-by-step instructions don't quite match for me). Then, in the "Mix
Dough" step it tells you to use 108g of the levain. What happens to the rest?
Are you supposed to throw it out or keep it as your sourdough starter?

Also, the "Autolyse" step tells you to use 402g of white flour while the
overview specifies 804g. (Judging by the hydration they must certainly mean
402g).

~~~
eps
Also times of all steps in "Step by step instructions" are 9:14.

------
rusbus
At least personally, when my sourdough is ready (by appearance and feel) for
the next step corresponds to the "time" from the "recipe" so infrequently that
I'm shocked when it does

Following a schedule exactly is a great way to make Frisbees (short dense
loaves)

------
angrygoat
This is cool. One minor thing, at least on Firefox it's not possible to open
the links to different breads in a new tab. It'd be nice to have that, just so
the user can open the breads that interest them in tabs and then sort through
them.

------
danielovichdk
So funny how tech people must have such a detailed recipe for baking with
sourdough. It's the same with coffee.

Listen.

Dough is a living organism. You cannot set a timer to it. It must be nursed,
especially based on what flour you use, freshness of the flour, the climate,
the moisture etc.

If you want to be really good at baking, then bake at least 100 loafs and see
what you learn.

Then try to change the flour brand and bake again. Then you will se a
different result.

You cannot time food. Get it.

~~~
jerzyt
Yes, you're right. It really doesn't take a genius to make a sourdough. But
you're misunderstanding the tech people. They will take tying shoelaces to the
genius level. Same with baking bread. And it's a lot of fun for a lot of us.

~~~
samizdis
Perhaps slightly off topic, but I have for years admired the cooking
schematics on Cooking for Engineers. Here's the recipe for meat lasagne -
scroll to the bottom and admire the schematic and the bonus layer diagram:

[http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/36/Meat-
Lasagna](http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/36/Meat-Lasagna)

Edited to add: Oh, and you mentioned shoelaces, so the venerable Ian's
Shoelace Site is a must:

[https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/](https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/)

------
Xcelerate
Anyone know a good recipe for a real French baguette? I haven’t yet been able
to find a baguette in the Bay Area that tastes like they do in France (lived
there for three years).

And honestly, good butter is hard to find too, although I did locate a little
store in San Mateo that carries Echire.

~~~
evgen
Finding a flour that is close to French type 55 is going to be the biggest
problem for getting a baguette that is close to authentic. Try King Arthur for
some of the custom blends that are close to what you need; US “all purpose”
flour has too much protein and the lower protein “cake flour” has a grind that
is too fine.

------
Hackbraten
Very well designed and implemented!

Would you mind adding a 12h/24h switcher? I’m in the EU and I can’t figure out
what 12am means vs. 12pm even though I keep looking it up.

~~~
jfim
It's super confusing.

The easiest way I've found to understand it is to think of 12 as being zero,
so the times go 11am (11) -> 00pm (12) -> 1pm (13) -> 11pm (23) -> 00am (24)
-> 1am (25).

------
mstaoru
Neat! I agree with the commenters above that we geeks try to take bread making
(essentially, a free art form), and quantify it somehow and make it into and
algorithm. And cheers to that!

Feature request: adjust timing automatically given a humidity + temperature
measure.

Feature request 2: fetch ambient humidity and temperature automatically from
users' GPS and time of day. ;-)

------
tomduncalf
Great idea! Made my first sourdough bread yesterday after a couple of weeks of
trying to get a starter going, the process is a fun and interesting project,
especially while staying at home, and you don’t need much to get started
(flour, water, ideally a cast iron pot, scales). Tastes amazing and reduces
social contact of having to go to the shops/bakery too :)

~~~
lostlogin
For something easy and delicious, try the below - half the recipe though, as
it makes masses.
[https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/thiswayup/audio/20...](https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/thiswayup/audio/2018620256/french-
flatbread-fougasse)

~~~
tomduncalf
Looks great! Thanks

------
technocratia
This is nice! I have been baking my own bread for a while now in a large
masonry oven, it takes a while to learn when the temperature in the oven is
right and the dough is good. Baking bread is more an art than science IMO. You
learn it by doing it, this is a nice starting point.

------
dewey
Small bug report, I'm seeing "Invalid date" here:
[https://imgur.com/rdcKJgw](https://imgur.com/rdcKJgw)

I just set the start time to "right now". Safari Version 13.1
(15609.1.20.111.8)

------
paganel
Next step is to better schedule yeast procuring in stores around the world, I
have been looking for it at stores close to me for two weeks now with no
success, I've read that the situation is similar in other European cities.

~~~
jmiserez
Yes, but while dried yeast is sold out completely here, locally produced fresh
yeast is still available. There's also other forms (freeze-dried, liquid, etc)
you can look for.

------
swah
Not sure if intentional but I really loved seeing Recipe.vue open and with
comments and logs... I'm trying to learn how to generate charts with SVG and
D3, this is helpful.

------
yegle
I discovered yesterday that loaf pan is mostly sold out in Target, Walmart.
Guess people really have more time to do bakery due to the WFH.

~~~
01100011
Flour and sugar have been sold out everywhere I've gone since the quarantine
started in the bay area.

------
georgeoliver
It's a good idea for a tool, but it could use a dough temperature and
automatic schedule adjustment based on a modified temp.

------
cheerlessbog
I picked Sour Dough, changed start time to tomorrow morning, the diagram went
blank and the schedule now shows Invalid Date.

------
jonahhorowitz
This is super interesting.

I tried my first bake yesterday, and it... did not go well. Second try is
currently forming. Fingers crossed.

~~~
awild
What were your breads' problems?

~~~
jonahhorowitz
Sorry I didn't see this until just now, but the bread didn't rise at all. Just
a cold lump. The second loaf came out great though.

------
sleavey
This is great! What I miss though is some search or filtering of flour type. I
only use spelt and rye.

------
flr03
Does someone has a plan to find T65-like flour in UK/London? Everything looks
sold out now.

~~~
renw0rp
I'm in the same situation. I still have some (finely ground) wheat flour, but
can't get any bread flour nor rye flour :/

------
stormdennis
Don't buy sourdough bread from supermarkets, they don't make it right. I heard
that every time you buy one from them a hipster dies.

------
Alextigtig
I love it!! Thanks for making!

------
mattswoop
Love it!!!

------
Theodores
Few appreciate what has gone wrong with regular store bought bread. Regular
store bought bread is created with the Chorleywood process, whereby
substandard wheat and carbon dioxide can be mashed together to make some dough
that can be baked into something that resembles bread.

These loaves of bread-style-wheat things are not made with just the basic
ingredients needed for bread. There are the E numbers for preservatives and
whatever else is 'needed'. Often the additives are added to the flour rather
than the dough and therefore do not have to be listed. Stuff derived from
human hair can get in there as an 'E number'. Often people self-diagnose
themselves as having gluten or other allergies when there could be problems
with the additives rather than the core product of what bread is supposed to
be.

Chucking out store bought bread and joining the sourdough club is a popular
reaction to the industrial nonsense that poses as 'bread'. However, there are
economic factors at play here. Sourdough keeps and it can be sold at a
premium.

Actual fresh bread made with yeast and zero additives does not keep and cannot
be sold at a premium. It is also less trendy and not on the radar of the
hipster crowd. However, if one is sorting out one's bread properly then a
bread machine and the ingredients for bread making is a shrewd investment. It
takes five minutes to load the machine with 500g of flour, 360 ml of water,
25g of some type of fat, a teaspoon of yeast, a teaspoon and a half of sugar
(to make the yeast do its thing) and a teaspoon and a quarter of salt. You can
then press the start button to have the freshest bread you could wish for in
four hours. Or you can set the timer so it is ready in the morning or when you
are back from work.

By taking this approach you have the benefits of pure, fresh bread with none
of the downsides of lengthy preparation times. You don't need an app to manage
your sourdough. It is also energy efficient as a bread machine is a small
rather than large appliance. The Panasonic machines are best as you have
recipes based on that machine plus you can get spare parts and the beginners
manual uses metric rather than obscure 'cup sizes'.

With home-machine, properly bakes bread you don't need to be chewing on some
sourdough rusk that is essentially stale, you can fire up the machine and keep
the fresh loaves coming every 2-3 days. You can mix and match the flours to
keep your bread varied. You can also focus on what you eat your bread with
rather than try to forever by adding ingredients to the bread such as
tomatoes, olives, nuts etc.

If you can maintain the routine then you never need join the sourdough club,
you can cut your own way with the innovative 'yeast' ingredient used properly
rather than thrown out.

~~~
wiredfool
Your rant would be better if you didn't misunderstand the need for sugar.

~~~
Theodores
Look, in my opinion the rejection of store bought bread made with the
Chorleywood process to go for sourdough or anything else trendy is not
entirely rational, there is much to recommend bread baked the conventional way
with a machine. It means you ain't spending your time scheduling your life
around some silly baking affectation but you get your bread.

That is a fair comment that needs a few words to understand. I appreciate that
to those that can only write one liners this could appear as a 'rant'. But it
is not.

However, I do now have a reason to rant, to rant about those that write things
such as your comment without explaining in full why the need is there for
sugar in bread.

~~~
wiredfool
You don't need sugar, You need carbohydrates, which are supplied in the flour.
4 ingredients are required, Flour, Water, Yeast and Salt. (though, in a pinch,
you can do without salt, but it works as something of a regulator to the speed
of the yeast and it affects the texture of the dough. (And you can do it
without the yeast. but then it's sourdough. (Water and flour though, I'm
pretty sure those are really required))) Fat isn't required either, but in
some doughs, it can help with the workability or flavor.

Try this: Mix yeast and a batch sized quantity of water. Nothing really
happens, but the yeast (depending on the type you've added) will dissolve or
break apart. Add some flour, about what you'd add in sugar. Mix it so that the
flour is not in clumps.

If the water temperature is reasonable, the yeast will start to break down the
carbohydrate in the flour into sugar, consume it, and start bubbling. Then add
it to bread, as the yeast has been proofed.

Some yeasts don't require the proofing step (SAF red for one). It's perfectly
fine to add to the dry ingredients. I like that stuff, super reliable and easy
to use but despite being french, I've never seen it outside the states. Some
yeasts are better for sweet breads (like panettone, cinnamon rolls, or
others). Some yeasts come in little sachets just suck and are hard to work
with, like the stuff I had in the cupboard pre-pandemic.

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awinter-py
love the gantt charts

