This is where we work today. Post as you go, ask as it comes up, and don’t wait until you’ve got a pretty loaf to say something. I’m around all morning. Read this before you start, because the bake is short and it moves fast. Preheat 45 minutes, not 30. 475°F with an empty metal pan on the bottom rack. The single biggest cause of a pale, soft bánh mì is an oven that wasn’t actually at temperature yet. A twenty minute bake has no room to recover from a cold start. Set everything out before you score. Boiling water in a measuring cup. Blade in hand. Mitts on the counter. Once you cut, those rolls go in inside of a minute. Score cold, straight from the fridge. Do not let them warm up first. Cold skin cuts clean, warm dough drags. One straight cut down the middle, or three angled cuts running nearly along the length of the loaf like a baguette. Odd number. Low blade angle, shallow. Steam 10 minutes, then get the steam out. Pull the pan, crack the door three seconds to vent, finish 8 to 12 minutes dry. That second half is what makes the crust go thin and shatter. Leave the steam in the whole time and you’ll get a soft leathery crust and wonder what happened. Check the temperature. 205 to 210°F in the center. Tapping the bottom tells you almost nothing on a roll this small. Recipes: Vietnamese Bánh Mì Baguette: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/vietnamese-banh-mi-baguette Sourdough Vietnamese Bánh Mì: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-vietnamese-banh-mi Post your shaped rolls, your scores, your bakes. Especially the ones that didn’t go how you wanted. That’s where the teaching happens. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

This weekend we’re baking bánh mì, the Vietnamese baguette, and there are two ingredients in this dough that may make you stop and look twice: rice flour and ascorbic acid. The rice flour changes the character of the bread. It doesn’t build gluten the way wheat flour does, so in a small amount it helps move us away from the heavier chew of a traditional French baguette and toward the lighter, crisper style we’re after. You’ll find bánh mì formulas with and without it, but in this version it’s there for a reason. (Viet World Kitchen) Then there’s ascorbic acid. Yep, Vitamin C. We’re using a very small amount as a dough improver. It strengthens the gluten network so the dough can hold fermentation gases more effectively, which helps us get better volume and that light, airy interior we want from this bread. (Reddit) Neither ingredient is there just to make the recipe look complicated. They’re helping us build a very specific bread. That’s part of what I want you watching this Saturday. Not just what goes into the bowl, but what each ingredient is doing once it gets there. Come bake with us: Yeasted: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/vietnamese-banh-mi-baguette Sourdough: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/sourdough-vietnamese-banh-mi Henry⭐️🔥

Most of the time when someone joins the Academy, we ask them to introduce themselves. But I realized something. Even those of us who’ve been here for months spend most of our time talking about the loaf in front of us. Fermentation. Starter problems. Shaping. Why something went flat. What we’re baking Saturday. We rub shoulders every day, but we don’t always get a chance to go one level deeper. So let’s change that today. Whether you’ve been here since day one or joined yesterday, tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? How did you find us? How did you start baking? What does baking mean to you? What are you hoping to learn or become better at? And what’s something about you we’d probably never know from talking about bread? Take your time. This isn’t a roll call. I want us to know the people we’re baking beside. I’ll start. A lot of you know me as the guy who talks about bread every day. Fewer of you know that my own story with bread started almost by accident, in a small bakery underneath my apartment in Germany more than 40 years ago. And it all really began with four words: “Henry, go wash your hands.” I wrote the rest of that story here: https://henry-hunter-bread-story.lovable.app/ Now it’s your turn. Henry⭐️🔥