Welcome to Clubhouse Eats, where we celebrate the game’s most delectable food and drink. Hope you brought your appetite.
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Many home cooks and bakers are intimidated by the prospect of baking bread. Sean Maloney, the executive chef at The Lodge at Primland, Auberge Collection, blames influencers for the way they romanticize the process — tending to sourdough starters for years, experimenting with exotic fruit yeasts, demonstrating intricate folding techniques, and debating scoring angles. “For beginners,” he says, “it can feel like bread is more science project than food.”
For a long time — even as a professional chef — bread represented one of Chef Maloney’s biggest challenges, too, but for a different reason. “Part of that comes from my own nature,” he explains. “I don’t like waiting.”
Eventually, the chef learned a lesson that, as he says, changed his relationship with bread. It’s a lesson every home baker must learn, as well. “Baking bread is a meditative process,” Maloney says. “Slow down. Let the yeast work its magic. Learn to recognize the signs before moving on to the next step.”
What are those signs, you ask? When a dough has proofed for the right amount of time, it should be twice as big as it was at the beginning. “Watch your dough,” Maloney instructs. “Don’t just time it; become an active observer.”
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That’s true for anytime you bake it. After all, bread dough is — in a way — a living, breathing thing, which means it’s not always going to react the same way. “Every day, every season, every kitchen environment will affect how your dough proofs,” the chef says. So, once your dough has properly expanded, you’ll need to make sure it passes the tactile test, too. As Maloney acknowledges, when you lightly press into the dough with your finger, properly proofed dough should spring back slowly, leaving a slight indentation.
Once proofed, bread dough needs to be degassed — this prevents large bubbles from forming inside the bread when it bakes. Fortunately, Chef Maloney assures the process is simple. “Just gently press your fist down in the center of the ball until you feel the dough push back a bit,” he instructs. “Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to fold the edges back over the middle by roughly one-third until you’ve formed a nice ball.”
And when it comes to beginning-friendly breads that are worth attempting at home, Parker House Rolls are at the top of the list. These soft, buttery rolls originated at Boston’s Parker House Hotel in the 1870s and quickly earned national attention — they even found their way into the White House kitchen. By the late 1800s, they had become a staple recipe in American cookbooks, and they’ve held their place at the table ever since.
“If you’ve been curious about bread, but hesitant to dive in, this is the perfect place to start,” Chef Maloney says. “This recipe is designed as an approachable entry into the world of bread-baking.” That said, there is one more thing to keep in mind: “Your first roll might not be perfect,” he acknowledges, “but it will always be better than no roll at all.”
