5 ms·

I find it funny that this is post is popular because the title includes “an engineers guide.” As a hobbyist bread and pizza maker there are so many amazing reso

by hahla 8y ago

I find it funny that this is post is popular because the title includes “an engineers guide.” As a hobbyist bread and pizza maker there are so many amazing resources across pizzamaking.com, YouTube and reddit that have years of community input I’m almost insulted that this is more popular.

jvkersch 8y ago
I agree but I do like the fact that it's written in Markdown and hosted on GitHub. I don't know many recipe books that allow for issues to be raised and that accept pull requests ;)
- calinet6 8y ago
  Nor many that need to ;) FWSY is pretty flawless as a whole work, and much more depth than this.
hendricius 8y ago
I really tried to skip all the mambojambo. Most recipes do not go into detail to answer the question of the why. It's almost like using any kind library when programming. You don't know the internals. My goal however is to really deep dive and actually go through the process of how the internals of that library work.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  My bread method is the opposite - how many steps can I skip and get a great result. The answer for me has resulted in a loaf started just now (with a 10 year old starter). It’s evening now and I’ll cook it tomorrow at midday. Edit: I’m talking about a bread recipe, not a starter one, which is clearly an important difference.
slow_donkey 8y ago
Pizzamaking.com was one of my first communities and it was eye-opening to see how passionate people were about their craft even as hobbyists. I guess I shouldn't be surprised it's still active given their tenacity and older audience.
SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
It's not a great "engineer's guide" though. My main issue at a glance is it's too linear "Day 7 Add another round of ingredients. Day 8 You are done". it doesn't work that predictably. You have to describe the outcome you're waiting for, it might happen on an earlier day or later. For SW engineers, it's a "while (!ready())" loop, not a "for (day in 1..8)" loop. Maybe it worked that way once for the OP. But it will vary. For SW engineers, this is a "works on my machine" type issue.
- hendricius 8y ago
  Haha that's true. The beauty and difficulty is that there is always a little bit of random in every recipe. We would need a docker machine as kitchen in which we bake to avoid any side effects. Every oven, every flour is different.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
    I like making sourdough because it's tasty, you can experiment, and unlike software it's entirely analogue and biological not digital. We're dealing with bugs not bugs.
- amelius 8y ago
  Yes, their GitHub guide should probably include a deep learning classifier that implements the ready() function.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
    The MVP of that classifier is a few photos for a person to work from.
- firmgently 8y ago
  Yes! I'd been baking all my own bread for years but had repeatedly failed to cultivate a sourdough starter despite following lots of guides to the letter. I finally got mine living nicely when I completely let go, stopped measuring and worrying, just learned to smell and watch. I pour flour in straight from the bag and splash water from a big container, as long as the consistency is somewhere between thin mud and thick mud it can work (I think heavily chlorinated water makes it very difficult though). I have no fridge in summer and little-to-no heating in winter, my starter just sits on a shelf at various temperatures... if I don't use/feed it for a while it needs a couple of days of feeding to get busy again. Even when it's not very lively I still make dough, it just takes longer to rise (and the taste/sourness might vary). I've not bought commercial yeast for a year now, all my bread is sourdough. Flour, water, salt, those are all my bread contains...well, those and billions of tiny fungi and bacteria. I feel like once flour was invented sourdough was inevitable. Adding water to ground up grain is an obvious move as it binds it and makes it easier to work with. At some point a flour/water mix is going to be left standing and start bubbling, and when cooked it's going to get magically bigger. Boom, bread. I enjoyed the post, always glad to see anything bread related. Baking bread has been a huge positive thing in my life, I'll never stop now (I was even without an oven for a year and learned to bake bread in a cast iron pot on a gas burner/hob). It's a rich sensory experience with all the smells and textures, and working dough is very grounding and 'real'. Every loaf is different and it's great fun waiting to see what's going to come out of the oven. I'd massively recommend getting into bread!

by hahla 8y ago

jvkersch 8y ago

I agree but I do like the fact that it's written in Markdown and hosted on GitHub. I don't know many recipe books that allow for issues to be raised and that accept pull requests ;)

calinet6 8y ago
Nor many that need to ;) FWSY is pretty flawless as a whole work, and much more depth than this.

hendricius 8y ago

I really tried to skip all the mambojambo. Most recipes do not go into detail to answer the question of the why. It's almost like using any kind library when programming. You don't know the internals. My goal however is to really deep dive and actually go through the process of how the internals of that library work.

lostlogin 8y ago
My bread method is the opposite - how many steps can I skip and get a great result. The answer for me has resulted in a loaf started just now (with a 10 year old starter). It’s evening now and I’ll cook it tomorrow at midday. Edit: I’m talking about a bread recipe, not a starter one, which is clearly an important difference.

slow_donkey 8y ago

Pizzamaking.com was one of my first communities and it was eye-opening to see how passionate people were about their craft even as hobbyists. I guess I shouldn't be surprised it's still active given their tenacity and older audience.

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago

It's not a great "engineer's guide" though. My main issue at a glance is it's too linear "Day 7 Add another round of ingredients. Day 8 You are done". it doesn't work that predictably. You have to describe the outcome you're waiting for, it might happen on an earlier day or later. For SW engineers, it's a "while (!ready())" loop, not a "for (day in 1..8)" loop. Maybe it worked that way once for the OP. But it will vary. For SW engineers, this is a "works on my machine" type issue.

hendricius 8y ago
Haha that's true. The beauty and difficulty is that there is always a little bit of random in every recipe. We would need a docker machine as kitchen in which we bake to avoid any side effects. Every oven, every flour is different.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
  I like making sourdough because it's tasty, you can experiment, and unlike software it's entirely analogue and biological not digital. We're dealing with bugs not bugs.
amelius 8y ago
Yes, their GitHub guide should probably include a deep learning classifier that implements the ready() function.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
  The MVP of that classifier is a few photos for a person to work from.
firmgently 8y ago
Yes! I'd been baking all my own bread for years but had repeatedly failed to cultivate a sourdough starter despite following lots of guides to the letter. I finally got mine living nicely when I completely let go, stopped measuring and worrying, just learned to smell and watch. I pour flour in straight from the bag and splash water from a big container, as long as the consistency is somewhere between thin mud and thick mud it can work (I think heavily chlorinated water makes it very difficult though). I have no fridge in summer and little-to-no heating in winter, my starter just sits on a shelf at various temperatures... if I don't use/feed it for a while it needs a couple of days of feeding to get busy again. Even when it's not very lively I still make dough, it just takes longer to rise (and the taste/sourness might vary). I've not bought commercial yeast for a year now, all my bread is sourdough. Flour, water, salt, those are all my bread contains...well, those and billions of tiny fungi and bacteria. I feel like once flour was invented sourdough was inevitable. Adding water to ground up grain is an obvious move as it binds it and makes it easier to work with. At some point a flour/water mix is going to be left standing and start bubbling, and when cooked it's going to get magically bigger. Boom, bread. I enjoyed the post, always glad to see anything bread related. Baking bread has been a huge positive thing in my life, I'll never stop now (I was even without an oven for a year and learned to bake bread in a cast iron pot on a gas burner/hob). It's a rich sensory experience with all the smells and textures, and working dough is very grounding and 'real'. Every loaf is different and it's great fun waiting to see what's going to come out of the oven. I'd massively recommend getting into bread!