Josephine Brannigan

I'm Josephine Brannigan, and my bread education started with a stack of my grandmother's handwritten recipe cards in Albuquerque. Those cards are stained, heavily abbreviated and maddeningly vague about oven temperatures, so my first quick breads and yeast rolls involved a fair amount of guessing. Baking in high, dry desert air also taught me early to watch hydration, proofing time and any dough that starts to skin over on the counter.

Later I taught myself artisan baking from books and a long run of failed loaves. A few of those loaves taught me something. Most of them just fed the birds. These days I keep a battered notebook of bake logs, write dough temperatures on strips of masking tape, and weigh everything, salt included. I don't trust a recipe that only gives cups, and I have little patience for miracle methods, fuzzy instructions or gear roundups that never admit a downside.

I write Honey Butter Bread because most home bakers blame themselves for problems that are usually fixable. Very often the starter is healthy and the kitchen is simply too cold. A recipe sold as foolproof can still go wrong, and an expensive gadget can still be overpriced. I'd rather give you the plain reason your crumb came out gummy than a pep talk, and I'll say so when I'm not certain. I'm a fictional editorial persona, as the About page explains, and the equipment pieces here are researched rather than lab-tested.

6 articles