The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

The Fresh Loaf Bread Book

CountryBoy's picture
CountryBoy

The Fresh Loaf Bread Book

I am a Novice here and am sure I always will be one.  However after about 8 weeks of reading and learning from the resident pros such as SourdoLady, Floydm, Jim, Jeffrey, MountainDog, et.al., it seems obvious to this Novice that our resident Pros could very easily write and in fact already have written The Fresh Loaf Bread Book for beginning breadmakers.  Reinhart, Beranbaum, et.al. are fine.  But it seems to me that our resident Pros have the unique ability to articulate simply even the most complex processes. The shelves of my local book store has no beginners bread books and as can be attested by this website, many of us starting out get lost with the Reinhart, et.al. books.  In anycase, my thanks to all the magnificent contributors to this website.  It really is a beauifully conceived and executed labor of love that has Risen above the normal website fare........

Darkstar's picture
Darkstar

Another blog I follow through RSS feeds is LifeHacker. The blog's owner was contacted by a literary agent that noticed his blog and wanted to discuss publishing a book based on the tips and tricks in the blog. It took him three months to get a proposal finalized and three more to get a deal but now you can go to Amazon.com and pre-order Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day. Incidentally he assembled the book initially with an $80 piece of Mac software that combs your blog DB and creates an outline format of like posts.

 

Below I've linked to the two posting story about how the author was approached and the ultimate outcome.


http://lifehacker.com/software/books/geek-to-live--turn-your-blog-into-a-book-part-i-227707.php

http://lifehacker.com/software/books/geek-to-live--turn-your-blog-into-a-book-part-ii-228215.php

 

Additionally sample chapters are on the site too.

 

Jeffrey's picture
Jeffrey

Thanks CountryBoy but i'm really pretty new at cooking bread.  All i did was give you some pretty basic advice.  That's why it seemed so simple, see how much you can learn on this sight.

 

Besides i like raisins.  I just made two more starters, one with just rye, and the other with raisins and bread flour.  even though the rye was started three days before the rye, today, day five for the raisins, it's passing up the rye.  I'll let you know which makes the best sourdough in a week or so.  After some test.

 

Hope you enjoy your new found hobby as much as me.

 

jeffrey
 

 

Jeffrey's picture
Jeffrey

I went to feed the starter, it was the rye that filled the jar today, day six.  Started the same thing again, both the same day this time.

 

To be honest, i don't know what i'm going to learn by this, how to make starter i guess.

 

jeffrey

Jeffrey's picture
Jeffrey

There was no big difference in rising times.  The raisin one was a bit faster, but not enough to make you choose it over the rye.

 


The starter, that was born from the rye is much more sour though.  Quite a bit, but of course, week old starter isn't suppose to be really sour, as i understand.  Given time, maybe the raisin one would get more sour.

 

As it stands now, i really don't need either, i have Sunnie.  It was started with rye and raisins.  Gets a dose of different grains from time to time, and is starting to develop quite nicely.  So it'll be used in most of my baking.  From time to time, i'll play with Carl, the one from Carl's friends.  It's a pretty good starter.

 

From time to time, i'll experiment with starter types.  Maybe get one that's really different enough to keep.

 

The moral here, if you want to use raisins, why not? go ahead.  Throw some wheat berries in if you like.

 

jeffrey