Jan's Dough
...one bowl, one wooden spoon, and my two hands...
Jan's Dough
Tip: Buy an Oven Thermometer and a Cooking Thermometer
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Don't forget that Jan's Dough offers free recipes for creating Sourdough Starter and Sourdough Bread! Go to: Sourdough Starter and Basic Sourdough Bread Recipe.
Go to Cookin' in the Kitchen with Poppo for some easy-ro-prepare recipes!
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"...there's a little bit of
fruitcake in every one of us..."
by Jimmy Buffett
Tip: Buy an Oven Thermometer and Cooking Thermometer
I’ve seen oven thermometers, available for about $5---it’s a little gizmo that will either hang from an oven rack, or sit on the rack. The cooking thermometer, should be priced under $10---it’s a small metal stem with a thermometer dial sitting on top, about 6 inches long. (Don’t get it confused with a CANDY thermometer—they are two totally different thingamajigs.) You should be able to buy both in the Kitchen Gadgets section of any store like Target or Wal-Mart, or maybe even your local grocery store.
The oven thermometer will tell you whether your oven actually heats to the temperature that you set on the oven dial. Most ovens do not heat exactly to the temperature setting---and as little as 10 degrees too hot or too cool can spell disaster, especially for bread. Also, you should do a test of temperatures at different places in your oven. For example, the back of my oven is almost 5 degrees hotter than the front of the oven. Knowing this, whenever I bake, I routinely turn my baking pans at 5-, 10-, or 15-minute intervals, depending on what I am baking.
The cooking thermometer will assist you with any number of food-related temperature-taking situations. I specifically use mine to test the temperature of the warm water I use to proof yeast when I bake bread. It is also handy for testing the inner temperature of cooked meats. I like to use mine to test the cooked temperature of chicken that I do in my tabletop rotisserie.
These two small kitchen gadgets will get plenty of use…especially if you bake sourdough bread as often as I do!
Good Luck...and Happy Baking!
Are you new to baking bread? The Jan's Dough can help with easy-to-follow illustrated instructions!
- Illustrated Instructions for Creating Jan's Dough Sourdough Starter (This is a day-by-day pictorial diary of the sourdough starter being created.)
- Making Bread...it's easier than you think! (This is a fully illustrated tutorial for making Jan's Dough Sourdough Bread.)
Do you have a question about making bread by hand? Are you having trouble with figuring out how to get bread dough to "rise"? Not sure if you can even make bread?
Questions are answered personally by Jan as time permits, so please allow 24-48 hours for a reply (usually sooner, but no guaranteed).
Jan's Dough proudly recommends:
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