Any bread leavened with a chemical leavener; baking powder, baking soda and an acid, rather than yeast. Muffins and biscuits are the most popular.

Method where you feed a starter with flour and water to keep it alive.

Method where you slow down (retard) the fermentation process by cooling the dough, usually in the refrigerator. If you're not ready to bake the dough the same day, you can put it in the refrigerator for a few days before baking. Make sure you cover the dough so it doesn't dry out.

This is dough that has been enriched with butter, sugar, and/or eggs. A classic example of this type of dough is Brioche.

The skin or outer coating of such foods as citrus fruit or cheese.

The stage when making yeast breads where the dough is set in a warm, draft-free place for a period of time while the yeast ferments some of the sugar in the dough into carbon dioxide and alcohol. The carbon dioxide gas helps the dough to rise.

Flatten and spread with a rolling pin

This refers to the process of shaping a dough into a round shape or the finished shape itself.

Coarsely ground whole grain rye kernels, similar in size to cracked wheat, bulgar, hominy grits, or steel-cut oats.

Bread that was traditional before the use of yeast. Made with a fermented mixture of cornmeal, salt, sugar, water and flour.

To heat milk just below a boiling point. Tiny bubbles will form around the edge

The process of cutting or slashing a dough prior to baking in order to give it a special look and to control its expansion during baking.

A gritty flour made from durum wheat. It is used both as an ingredient and as a dusting flour on peels.

To put dry ingredients like flour through a sifter or sieve

A nonfermented pre-dough containing grain, along with water or other liquid, and sometimes salt. Soaking the grain initiates enzyme activity in advance of fermenting the dough.