This week the kitchen smells like pretzels. We’re making soft pretzels from scratch, and I mean the real thing. Chewy crust, soft pillowy inside, deep golden brown. Better than any mall pretzel you’ve ever had. Here’s the thing about a pretzel. What makes it a pretzel isn’t the shape. It’s the bath. Before these go in the oven, they take a quick dip in boiling water with baking soda stirred in. That alkaline bath is what gives you the dark color, the shine, and that chewy pull when you bite in. Skip it and you’ve just got bread shaped like a pretzel. That same bath is the magic behind our pretzel loaf, so if you’ve baked that one with us, you already know the secret. Three ways in this week. Pick the one that fits you: 🥨 Classic Soft Pretzels. Yeasted, start to finish in about two hours. Best entry point. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/classic-soft-pretzels 🥨 Sourdough Soft Pretzels. Naturally leavened, deeper flavor, and you can stretch it overnight. Twists, bites, or buns. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-soft-pretzels 🥨 Kids Can Bake Pretzels. No mixer, built-in science lessons, made for little hands at the counter. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/kids-can-bake-soft-pretzels Saturday we bake together. Working thread opens at 8:00 AM ET. Mix with us, post your photos, ask your questions in real time. No lye. No special equipment. Just baking soda, a pot of water, and your hands. Pull up a stool. Let’s twist. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

When we first opened the Academy, I used to do a new member welcome post every so often. Then I got away from it, and here's why. I started welcoming every single new member personally instead. Here's what that looks like behind the scenes. When you join the Academy, we ask you a few questions. One of them is what you hope to learn or gain by being here. I read every answer. Then I follow up with each of you personally and hand you something to get started, a recipe, a video, a blog post, an article, whatever fits what you told me you wanted. So if you've joined us recently, you haven't gone without a welcome. That's been happening quietly all along, and it isn't changing. What is changing is this. A welcome from me is one thing. A welcome from all of you is quite another. So from now on, I'm bringing you into it. I'm going to introduce our new members right here in the feed so you can meet them too. A big welcome to our newest members @Geraldine Kendall @Anthony Reed @Pam Penney @Mehmetcan Yılmaz @Thu Phuong @Dianne Stone @Jenn Taylor @Amy Kahler @Melissa Likes @Robin Royce @Donna Laycock @Jamie Dietrich @Toni McCord @Abby Bowlin @Lesli Hansen @Jenny Rader-Bakos @Joel Kellen @Susan Chitty @Bianca Abella @Mpasa Monageng and @Gaelene E . You’re in the right place if you want to stop guessing and start baking with confidence.

For months I've been working on something on the side. Not a course, not a book. A tool. Here's the thing. I've made hundreds of videos, articles, recipes, and lessons over the years. And even I couldn't always put my hands on the right one fast. Somebody would ask about dense crumb and I'd know the answer lived in three videos, a blog post, and a classroom module. Finding them all? That was the work. So I built myself a rolodex. One place that holds everything I've ever made, organized by topic. Twenty-nine topics. Videos, recipes, articles, classroom lessons, the books, the podcast. All of it. It's called The Bread Authority. You don't search for topics. You search for problems. Type "flat loaf" and it takes you to the answer. Type "overproofed dough" and it knows what you mean. Misspell sourdough at six in the morning with flour on your hands? It still finds you. It was designed for me. But why keep it to myself. It's free, and it lives here: https://baking-great-bread.lovable.app/bread-authority There's a 60-second tour at the top of the page if you want to see it work before you dig in. I'll have it pinned in the classroom near the top of the page by close of business so it's easy to find. Now tell me this. What's the one bread problem you could never find a straight answer for? Drop it below. If The Bread Authority doesn't already cover it, I'll build it. ~ Henry⭐🔥

We've got three pizzas going this weekend in the Bake-Along, and one of them is just for the little ones. The Kids Can Bake Personal Pan Pizza is for any kid in your life. Sons, daughters, grandkids, nieces, nephews. The neighbor's kid you've been meaning to bake with. Pull them up to the counter Saturday and hand them their own dough ball. One dough ball, one little baker. That's the whole idea. This isn't pretend baking. It's real dough, real yeast, real ingredients, scaled down so it fits in little hands at 62 percent hydration. They get to measure. Wake up the yeast. Knead it. Watch it rise. Choose their own toppings. Shape it however they want, even if "however they want" is a dinosaur track. A few lines to keep in your back pocket while you bake: Warm bath water, not dragon breath hot. If the dough shrinks back, it's not being stubborn, it's asking for a nap. There's no wrong shape. Kids build the pizza, grownups handle the heat. Melted cheese is lava. They think they're just making lunch. You and I know they're learning measuring, yeast, gluten, patience, and how to make decisions. That's a whole curriculum hidden inside one personal pan pizza. Bake it together Saturday, then come back and post photos in the thread. Especially the weird-shaped ones. Those are my favorite. 🍕 Kids Can Bake Personal Pan Pizza recipe: https://skoo.ly/kids-pan-pizza Perfection is not required. Progress is. ~ Henry ⭐🔥

A few of you may start seeing posts from members who have enrolled in From Oven to Market, my flagship course on selling what you bake. Kim has already posted her first assignment, and more students will be joining her in the coming weeks as they work through the modules. If you see those posts, please show up for them the way this community always does. Read what they're working through. Give them honest feedback. Cheer the wins. These bakers have made a real commitment. They're not just baking for the family table anymore. They're stepping out to turn the thing they love into a business that pays them back, and that takes guts. For those of you who haven't heard about the course yet, From Oven to Market officially launched this week. It's nine modules built on twenty years of selling at farmers markets and the lessons in my book of the same name. Pricing, packaging, booth setup, customer connection, insurance, the legal side of cottage food law, the AI-powered storefront, and how to scale without burning out. Every module has a teaching video, a digital worksheet you can fill out and save, and a real example from a working market baker. It's not theory. It's the system I wish someone had handed me before my first Saturday morning at the booth. Here's the 8-minute walkthrough if you want to see what's inside: https://youtu.be/y759LCNDE1k And the landing page is here: https://from-oven-to-market.lovable.app/ If you're already selling and want to do it right, or you've been thinking about it and don't know where to start, this is the answer. There are two ways in, a Self-Paced track and a Coached track with live group calls and direct feedback from me on your pricing, packaging, and booth photos. And whether you're enrolled or not, keep an eye out for the FOTM members posting their assignments. The work they're doing in public is the kind of thing that lifts everybody. Let's bake. — Henry⭐🔥