The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge: First 20 Breads

Over the past few months, I have been baking every recipe in the book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, just working alphabetically through the book.

When the whole lockdown during pandemic started I, like many other people, found myself stuck at home for an extended period of time. During this period, I started baking sourdough (as did so many other people). I learned sourdough from the Tartine book, and I baked loaf after loaf, gradually tuning the recipes until I really had a feel for them.

After a few months of sourdough, I got the itch to try something new, and that was when I stumbled over the Bread Baker’s Apprentice (BBA) challenge. Turns out there are dozens of people over the past few years who have attempted to bake all 42 of the recipes from BBA, from Anadama to whole-wheat.

It has been pretty slow going, but as of today I hit 21 breads, with Pain à l’Ancienne. Half way there, 21 more to go.

If you want to follow along then here is my page about it

Progress So Far

Montage of the breads bakes so far. From top-left to bottom-right: Anadama, Greek celebration bread, bagels, brioche, casatiello, challah, ciabatta, cinnamon-raisin bread, cinnamon buns, corn bread, cranberry-walnut celebration loaf, english muffins, foccacia, French bread, Italian bread, Kaiser rolls, lavash crackers, light wheat bread, marbled rye bread, multigrain bread