Cooked filling or raw apples straight into the shell. We are running both in our case today, Friday and Saturday, and whichever one you pick goes into the Thanksgiving pies.

Three days, a pinch of yeast, and a scale. Our full chef and levain process, including the one mistake that wastes all three days.

How we make chocolate chip cookies..... with real ingredients! There is no legal definition of "from scratch." None. No agency regulates it, nobody audits it, and any bakery in America can put it on a sign with no obligation to change a single thing about how they work. So the phrase is worth exactly what the person saying it decides to make it worth. Here is what it means at The Lakehouse Bakery, including the parts most places would leave out. "Baked fresh" is not "made fre

Store tomatoes lost their flavor for two documented reasons, and neither one is your imagination. Plus how to pick, cook and keep the good ones.

Butter from around the world If you have read anything about baking in the last ten years, somebody has told you to buy European butter. Higher butterfat. Better flavor. Worth the money. We are a scratch bakery. We buy butter by the thirty six pound case, 2-3 per week. And for most of what we make, we use standard American butter on purpose. Here is the actual difference, and here is where it earns its price. What the difference actually is Three things, and only three. Butte

Blind baked shell with crimped edges Last week we talked about fruit fillings and how to keep a pie from turning into soup. Several of you came back with the other half of the problem. The filling was fine. The bottom crust was raw. Pale, soft, a little gummy, sitting under a perfectly good filling like it gave up partway through. Here is the thing about that. The fix is easy. It has always been easy. The reason you think it is hard is that almost everyone teaches it wrong. Y

Michigan blueberries and peaches are peaking right now. Here is how to build a fruit pie that slices clean, including the method most recipes never tell you about.

Vanilla flower with open pod Most people assume vanilla is the safe choice. The plain one. The thing you reach for when you're not trying to be interesting. Those people have never thought about where vanilla actually comes from. We use Nielsen-Massey Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste in our kitchen, and we're deliberate about that — the brand, the form, the sourcing. Here's the full story, because it's a better one than "it came in a brown bottle." Vanilla has no business existing

The filling gets the credit, but the bread does the heavy lifting. Why the loaf is the most important decision on the plate — and how we match each of our sandwiches to the right bread.

Skip the flag cake. Two things decide your Fourth of July cookout — the bread and the fruit — plus real Chantilly cream and the one food-safety rule that matters in the heat.

We just wrapped our 12-week Knead to Know series — twelve posts walking through the craft of making bread, flour to finished loaf. Consider this the bonus round: what happens when you pull the gluten out entirely, and how to bake well anyway. Gluten-free baking has a reputation, and a lot of it is earned. Dense. Crumbly. Gummy in the middle, sandy at the edges. People assume that's just the deal when you take the gluten out. It isn't. The difference between sad gluten-free an

How to store bread so it lasts: why the fridge stales it faster, the right way to freeze a loaf, and how to bring day-old bread back to life.

Scoring bread controls where a loaf opens in the oven. Here's how to score, why steam matters, and how to know when the loaf is actually done.

Shaping the dough Last week we covered bulk fermentation — the long quiet stretch where the dough goes from a wet mass into something with real structure and flavor. This week we get to the hands-on part where that mass finally takes its actual shape. Shaping is the moment the dough finally takes its actual form. Done well, the loaf holds its shape through proof, springs cleanly in the oven, and slices into the structure you wanted. Done poorly, it spreads flat on the stone,

Bulk fermenting dough Last week we covered yeast — what it is, what it eats, what kills it, and why time is a flavor ingredient. This week we get to the stretch where most of that flavor actually shows up. Bulk fermentation is the first major rise. It starts the minute the dough is mixed and ends when you divide it for shaping. Everything happens here. The yeast goes to work in earnest, the gluten finishes organizing itself, acids and flavor compounds build, and the dough qui

Healthy, active yeast! Last week we covered mixing and autolyse — the chemistry of the first ten minutes, before anything biological happens. This week the biology shows up. Once yeast hits hydrated flour, your dough stops being a paste and starts being a colony. Living things are working in there. Eating, producing gas, throwing off heat, building flavor compounds, growing. If you understand what those living things need — and what kills them — bread stops being a recipe to

The difference autolyse makes in dough. Last week we broke down hydration — what the percentage means, why it changes the crumb, and why your water source matters more than most home bakers think. This week we zoom in even further, to the first ten minutes of a bread formula. Before the kneading starts. Before the yeast goes in. Before the salt. That window — flour meets water, then everything pauses — is called autolyse. And what happens inside the dough during that rest cha

Not all water is the same...... Last week we got into baker's percentages — flour at 100%, everything else as a ratio. This week we're zooming in on the most important number on that list....Hydration. Settle in, this is a LONG post..... If gluten is the muscle of the loaf and flour is the foundation, water is what brings the whole thing to life. Adjust the hydration by ten percentage points and you don't just change the dough — you change the bread. Different crumb, differe

Scaling all ingredients Last week we got into gluten — what builds it, what limits it, and why every loaf has its own target. This week we're talking about the system professional bakers use to keep all of that under control. Baker's percentages. If you've ever tried to double a bread recipe and ended up with something weird, or wondered why two recipes with the "same" ingredients turn out completely different, this is the missing piece. Once you understand baker's percentage

Gluten Strands Last week we talked about flour — protein content, which types to use, and why it matters for everything you bake. This week we're getting into what that protein actually does once you add water and start working. Gluten. It's the most important thing in bread that you can't see, and understanding how it works is the difference between making bread and just mixing ingredients and hoping for the best. Think of a Rubber Band Full of Ball Bearings Here's a menta