YAY! I've been waiting all week and it's finally here. My box-o-baking-love.


My ingredient goodie box includes SAF yeast, (French, because they're at the pinnacle of bread), 5lbs of bread flour, because KA has a higher protein content than typical supermarket bread flour, Italian-style flour which I ordered because it's supposed to make great thin crust pizza dough, vital wheat gluten because it's called for in the Cinnabon clone recipe (gluten is what makes dough elastic and stretchy), and a two-pound block of Merckens bittersweet chocolate which I think is a good quality, delicious all-purpose pastry chocolate that isn't prohibitively expensive.
This appears to be a lot of fuss for what are seemingly common items that I could have purchased at my local supermarket, but with bread, the yum is in the minutiae and the right ingredients really do make all the difference.
I have several cookbooks devoted to bread, but my favorite is The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. I like this book because it's got very detailed explanations about the science of bread baking and it gives extensive descriptions of bread ingredients down to the differences between popular brands of flours, yeasts, etc., and why they all produce different results. It's basically a textbook for bread baking and, recipes aside, an informative and interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.
So I guess I'm off with my first-ever attempt at Croissants. Should be interesting!