My attempt at my great-grandma's bread recipe was a sticky mess

I found my great-grandma's handwritten bread recipe in a box. When I tried it, the dough was too wet and stuck to everything. Do old recipes often need adjustments, or am I doing something wrong?

4 comments

4 Comments

king.lisa29d ago

You probably just messed up the measurements.

iris_ellis16d ago

Old recipes can be so tricky with those vague instructions. Martinez.anthony's story about the pie crust is a perfect example of why you can't always trust them word for word. What kind of recipe were you even trying to follow, was it one of those handwritten ones from a relative? Sometimes the problem isn't the cook, it's the recipe itself being from a totally different time.

blairwhite16d ago

Did you check if the recipe calls for a specific type of flour, like bread flour?

martinez.anthony29d ago

Oh, that's so familiar! My friend Jake dug up his great-aunt's pie crust recipe last year. He followed it exactly and ended up with soup in a bowl. Turns out, back in the day, they used a different kind of flour that soaked up more liquid. He had to add almost a whole extra cup of flour to get it to come together. Old recipes are like that sometimes, you gotta treat them as a starting point and adjust by feel.