The bread bible points out instant yeast as having a greater concentration of live yeast than the active.  Other than that is there any reason to use one as opposed to the other?

I'm off to Shanghai this weekend, and I should have thought of this sooner.  Does any one know where I can get bread supplies, namely bread flour, rye, in Shanghai?  I'm using the new bullet train and taxis staying overnight and there is room for a flour excursion.  Please, please, please....Thank you very much appreciated, crossing my fingers,   Mini Oven 

Buying ingredients in small quantities can be expensive.  For instance caraway seeds sell locally for almost $4 for 1.75 ounces.  I was going through a couple of those a month and decided to shop around on the internet.  I found a much less expensive source at about $10/pound + shipping.  When I bought some other items at the same time my shipping cost for the caraway seeds came in at $2.50.  My total cost was approximately 78 cents/ounce.  The local cost was $2.29/ounce, and then I had to factor in driving, time, etc....

Today I used a new recipe.  On one hand it was a failure, but on the other hand it had some redeeming qualities.  There were three ingredients which I normally don't use in bread:  egg, maple syrup and milk.  The crust burned before the internal temperature of the bread reached 200°F..  I don't know which of the ingredients caused the crust to burn.  The loaf itself reached an excellent height.

A closer look at the burnt crust follows:

If French bread is so good why don't we see more of it in the U.S.?  I've read so many articles praising the quality of French bread and even more from frustrated bakers who can't come close to duplicating it.  It wouldn't take much to obtain some French wheat grain, bring it to North America and grow it.  I think that I've found one answer as to why this hasn't happened.  It's not that their flour is so much better.  It's that the French flour is so much worse, or to put it in less inflammatory words, French flour has less protein.  North American ba

Try as I may I wasn't able to locate a local source of hard, spring, golden wheat at a reasonable price.  The freight cost made ordering direct prohibitive.  So, I had my nearby health-food-store-pill-pusher try to find any hard, spring wheat for me.  I'll give them credit.  They will try to find whatever I ask of them.  Imagine my surprise when I picked up the wheat today and found that they had obtained a GOLDEN, hard, spring wheat for me - Prairie Gold as grown and sold by Wheat Montana.  Here's their web site:  http://wheatmont

Yes I have read many of the books but I would like to know which kind of salt and sugar the experienced veterans use? Thanks.

In the Bread Bible by Levy she takes a whole page to discuss malt, but not really Why one uses it other than to suggest for a bit more crust.  Can someone out there tell me the different uses of malt?  I have looked all over for it around where I live -Westchester County, NY-and no one has it, so, will have to get it from KA I guess.  Thanks...Country Boy

We have a German high school exchange student staying with us. He saw me doing my sourdough miche, and next thing you know, his grandmother had some recipes she emailed for me to try, including one with spelt in it. So, now our student is trying to translate the recipes to English. One of the ingredients is called "edelhefe", but we can't figure out how to translate that. Anyone know what this is?

Thanks, Bill

Hi all,