Top 3 Favorite Dough Recipes from My Micro Bakery

Stepping into the baking world when I was 19 was both exciting and intimidating. I dreamed of one day making flaky croissants, crusty artisan loaves, and mouth-watering danishes. But something about the world of artisan baking seemed unreachable from my own kitchen—like it was reserved only for little bakeries in France or high-end bakeries in the city. As years went by and I learned more and more in my home kitchen and through my micro bakery on my farm, I found this to be completely untrue. You can bake anything, but just like anything else, it takes work, practice, and understanding. Here are my 3 favorite dough recipes that opened my eyes to the world of at-home artisan baking.

Why It’s Important to Understand Your Dough

We live in a time where you can very quickly find four different recipes for the same baked good instantly. But realistically, they are all very similar. One type of dough can be the base of so many different kinds of baked goods. Understanding your dough allows for two things to happen:

You gain freedom in your kitchen. Your recipe becomes second nature to you. You know what to have on hand and what to get from the grocery store. When you make something over and over again, you become an expert in it and you begin to enjoy the process even more.
You bake more efficiently. If you are someone who has a home bakery, then simplifying what you are making will help with productivity and profitability. I talk about this more in my article, “Best Items to Sell at Your Micro Bakery.” If you are making one dough for cinnamon rolls and then a different dough for homemade dinner rolls, and then a different one for garlic knots, things can get hectic quickly. If you instead create one dough that will work for each of these items, then you simply create a large batch of dough and then shape it into several different items.

Brioche Dough

What is Brioche Dough?

Brioche dough is an enriched dough. That means it contains butter, eggs, and milk. Brioche bread is known as a decadent bread that is perfect for French toast. However, as a dough, it can be the base of many baked goods.

What Can I Use Brioche Dough For?

Brioche dough was the dough I used when I first started my own home bakery in college. Each morning I would get up and use the same brioche dough recipe. I would make the dough, let it rise, and then shape it into something different each day. I learned to make cinnamon rolls, sweet rolls, babkas, twists, danishes, and so much more using this very bread. Eventually I learned what I liked using brioche dough for and what I didn’t like using brioche for.

At the Flour Barn, we use brioche dough for cinnamon rolls, blackberry cobbler rolls, pecan rolls, lemon rolls, honey buns, pizza rolls, various flavors of danishes, bread pudding, and jalapeño popper croissants. We also teach a class on how to make and use brioche dough. It is easy to shape in many different designs and very reliable in rising properly.

How Do I Know If I Can Use Brioche Dough for a Baked Good?

I mentioned earlier that this was the first recipe I created that was foolproof. It rose great each time and tasted delicious. Therefore, when I would look for ideas on what to bake, I would pull from cookbooks, baking books, and Pinterest. If I saw a loaf that had a filling I liked, or a unique shape, I would just use my own brioche dough recipe and insert it into that baker’s recipe. So when I came across a blackberry babka bread, I simply used my favorite dough and filled it with a blackberry filling and watched a video on how to shape babka. Once you have a solid recipe that you like, the possibilities are endless.

Focaccia Dough

What is Focaccia Dough?

Focaccia dough is classically an Italian flatbread that is similar to pizza dough in terms of ingredients. However, because it is baked in hot olive oil in a sheet pan, it creates this fluffy bread that is soft on the inside and crispy on the outside.

What Can I Use Focaccia Dough For?

A classic focaccia with Italian seasoning and coarse salt is delicious. But once you give yourself permission to be creative and do whatever you want, a new world will be opened up to you. This is great for a base to a deep-dish pizza, a cheesy bread, or for caprese sandwiches. But it also is so good with sweet toppings—like whole grapes and sugar, or blackberry compote and a lemon glaze, or even fresh peaches and brie cheese. The possibilities are endless!

At the Flour Barn, we use focaccia for our focaccia breakfast sandwiches. We offer two types of sandwiches: one on a classic Italian focaccia and one on a sweet focaccia that we top with sugar. Then we cut our focaccia bread and fill it with egg, cheese, meat, and a special sauce. We also have been selling a loaded baked potato focaccia from the case, and it has quickly become a customer favorite. This would be a great item to sell for any home bakery. It also is a great dough to make at home to then have an easy dinner of decadent sandwiches or deep-dish pizza!

How Do I Know If I Can Use Focaccia Dough for a Baked Good?

Although there are not as many different items that you can make with focaccia, you can make so many different flavors of focaccia. So while brioche dough can be turned into so many different types of baked goods, focaccia is more limited. It can be used to make breadsticks, croutons, pizza, and cheesy bread. But what I would explore is the toppings you design your focaccia with. Be sure to read our full post on focaccia to learn what toppings thrive in a hot oven and what items should be added after baking. The options are endless with a good crispy and fluffy focaccia.

Sourdough

I’m sure the world needs one more baker talking about how great sourdough is! If you love to bake and also constantly crave a crusty loaf of bread, you need to try sourdough.

What is Sourdough?

If we are talking about the sourdough bread dough, then sourdough is a loaf of bread that is made with no commercial yeast, but instead uses a natural leavener (an active sourdough starter). Although sourdough is a category much larger than just bread. Your sourdough starter, when active, can be used in any recipe in replacement of commercial yeast. It also can be used for other recipes referred to as “discard recipes.”

What Can I Use Sourdough For?

If you just focus on sourdough bread dough, you can make a variety of different flavor combinations including cranberry walnut, jalapeño cheddar, cinnamon sugar, and so much more. You can turn this dough into mini loaves, bread bowls, or pizza dough.

At the bakery, we only make simple sourdough bread loaves. We sell a high volume of plain loaves, putting us at our current oven capacity. Maybe one day this will grow though!

At home, I encourage you to explore the world of sourdough including sourdough brioche, sourdough discard recipes, and so much more! We also teach a full class on how to make artisan sourdough bread.

How Do I Know If I Can Use Sourdough for a Baked Good?

If a recipe has commercial yeast, it can be replaced with a bubbly sourdough starter. For every 5-7 grams of yeast, you can replace with 100 grams of active starter. Sourdough takes significantly longer to rise, but has the added benefit of pre-digesting inflammatory properties of flour. When you start to accumulate more sourdough starter than you need, search for sourdough discard recipes and learn the excitement of sourdough.