Serious Eats: Talk

How to make better bread?

Posted by fuuchan, March 6, 2009

So yesterday, I made my first loaf of bread ("Hi, I'm Fuu and I use my oven for storage, not for baking" ) from scratch.
I used a very basic recipe for white bread from A Year in Bread.

The loaf was visually stunning, rather picturesque in its loafy shape and color. The insides were nice and soft and a little bit chewy.

Only I think its really rather bland. It doesn't taste like much of anything, not salty, not sweet, not wheaty. The crumb is a bit gummy (you wouldn't know until you started chewing a bite of a slice) and the crust could stand to be crisper.

Any of you more experienced bakers know how to improve a baking novice's blase loaf?

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