I owe my bread making ability to this website and everybody associated with it... Thankyou. When I bake bread it gets scarfed down in minutes. I'm a jack of all trades Husband, Father, Truck driver, Auto mechanic, Robot programmer, Drag racer and motocrosser. Its crazy to admit but when I pull out a loaf of bread it tops everything but the first two on the list. I loved the blog from a few days ago. It said something like "Does anybody know of a website where professional bakers chat and share recipes" and the response was "you just landed in one"    so hello everybody and I'm glad to be a member.

Great job with this site. Very professional and so much good info and links. As a pro chef for over 30 years and a big home baker I am very impressed! Keep up the good work and perhaps I can contribute something in turn. Keep the oven hot my friends...........

Having used this site for ages, and having greatly appreciated and learned from the collective wisdom of my fellow bakers, I finally decided to join the Fl. So now, I figured, is as good a time to introduce myself as ever.

Here's my story. A couple of years ago I did not know how to bake anything. All the foolproof recipes that my more baking-talented friends gave me simply said, "add as much flour as the dough will take" or "knead until the dough would stop sticking" -- but the dough would take as much as I'd give it or will never stop sticking, thought I! I honestly tried baking bread a few times, and failed miserably every time, producing absolutely ugly loaves that were as heavy as a brick, and as raw on the inside as they were burnt on the outside -- in other words, completely and utterly inedible. After a while the word "yeast" would send me into a major panic mode, even though in all other respects I was a very fearless and rather successful cook.

And then some kind soul sent me the link to the youtube no-knead bread recipe. Now THAT seemed totally foolproof. I worked up some courage and decided to try it. It came out! Not to push my luck too far I waited a few days and then tried it again. It came out again! At that point, having gained just the tiniest bit of self-confidence, I started reading cookbooks and trying some "real" recipes. Some came out, some didn't. But my failures ended up being even more educational than my successes -- I started actually "getting it."

One day early this summer I was at a local farmers' market. I had a loaf of my Russian corainder-rye bread that I brought at the request of a friend. Well, the friend couldn't come to the market, so I gave the loaf to the market manager. As soon as the market ended that day, she found me through common friends and asked me if I could become a vendor at the market. Apparently, my bread was different enough from everything else that was available that she wanted to have me join them.

It took me a little time to rework my recipes from cups/spoons into grams and milliliters (my brain works in metric only) and to figure out how to scale up from baking 10-15 loaves a week to over 100 in one day (for the market, I generally make a push and bake all of my 120-150 loaves on Friday, but that would be all of my weekly baking). By mid-July I started selling my breads at the market. I absolutely love it! It is very hard work, it doesn't make a lot of money (although I am not in the red, thank goodness!) but I feel that after a lifetime of working much less "real" kind of jobs I'm finally doing something that makes people happy. At least, my customers' faces make it all worth my while.

My name is Lee and live near Port Huron MI. I guess my facination with using yeast started from brewing beer 20 some years ago, although I haven't in a long while. From there it went to baking bread the direct method, then to sourdough but I would let the starter die fom lack of use I guess. At that point I started mostly using the sponge method and have a formula that converts any bread recipe into a sponge method.  I recently acquired a very accurate scale and am looking forward to making a more consistant loaf by weighing the ingredients, thats why I am here. I am pretty good at using my hands to tell if the dough seems right But, I still get a flop every now and then and that irritates me hehe. This looks like a great site and I will be hanging around here alot now that it's getting colder outside and smoking meat (another passion) will really slow down. So winter time is baking time .

I just wanted to let you know who I am. I am a retired Cinematographer and bake in a Big Green Egg, married my best friend Jackie and we have a dog Sadie a Cockapoo

This is a Cranberry pie that I baked yesterday

Ross

Hi everyone. I joined this site a month or more ago and have been enjoying it very much. I bought a bread machine about 4 months ago and have been baking bread literally every other day since. I no longer buy bread in any of the stores around here as I like mine far better. I bought a hearth kit about a month and a half ago along with PRs books BBA and American Pie. I am also an avid coffee roaster and have been making coffee at home on a Rancillio Silvia espresso machine for years. Nothing beats espresso from a fresh and wonderfully roasted bean along with a home made french or italian bread! The strange thing is that my partner and I are now eating FAR more bread than ever before and for some reason she and I  have both lost weight. Go and figure.

I am very happy to be connected to this community and the website is great. One of my goals is to make a bagel that satisfies my craving of New York bagels. So far I have not succeeded but am continuing my quest. I was born and raised in New York and as many of you know, the New York bagel is in a class of its own. Unfortunately in recent visits to NY I have been disappointed by some of the bagels being offered but nothing can be worse than what I have found on the West Coast since having moved here many years ago.

I do have a question maybe someone can answer: I have read repeatedly that one of the best ways to test the readiness of the bread is by poking a thermometer into the center and taking it's temp. In doing so I end up putting a hole (albeit small) in the loaf. In reading the PR book he writes about the importance of the cooling off period and what takes place inside the loaf during that time and why you shouldn't cut the bread. I'm wondering if by taking the temp of the bread and creating that hole if I am losing too much heat within the bread during the cooling off period. When I put my finger just above the hole there is no doubt that heat is escaping.

Sticky Fingers- AKA Ira

Well,

I just processed my first loaf o' bread.  I've never done this before.  I went to my local grocer and the bag of KJF stood out as being natual, rustic etc...  After my purchase I realized that I bought hard red KJF.  Not so bad as i've enjoyed 100% wheat before but I whish I bought soft or hard white.  Oh well.  I will just top it with PB and J to mask the flavor...  or my first jar of chocolate crack (i mean "Nutella."  Wow!  That stuff is truley not necessary but sooo good. )

I followed KJF's recipe on the bag and the loaf turned out good (solid/airy/cooked...) but...  The taste...

I look forward to the experienced folks in this community sharing their abilities.

I really have no idea.

Well, I shouldn't say that.  I do have some knowedge of the basics (salt, shugar, flour, fire...) but this doesn't come naturally to me.

Thanks in advance.

Clint.

Hello from a new guy. I'm really enjoying this site, though it's so large and complex I could get lost for hours. I'm a gluten-free baker, driven to this place by the fact that both my wife and I have Celiac. (She gave it to me.... just kidding!). But I love inventing so GF is actually fun. It's inspired me to create a line of wild leaven GF breads. Will post photos when I get some images that meet my ridiculous standards.

The Question: Anyone out there in the Northern NJ NYC area who runs a wood-fired oven and would be willing to let me bake some GF loaves in it? Or who is contemplating such a thing and wants a co-conspirator? 

Thanks for your interest!

Charles Luce

Hello everyone.  I'm relatively new to baking breads (a couple successful loaves thus far).  I've already started nurturing my own sourdough starter following the pineapple juice method.  It's a bit over a week old now.  I've been drawn to the obsessiveness of baking bread largely due to health and taste reasons.  I just got tired of store bought bread and the slight chemical tastes in them.  Does anyone have any good tried and true whole wheat and white sandwich bread recipes?  My wife and I probably go through a store bought loaf every two weeks.  Would it be best to maybe bake one loaf a week and freeze half of it and then refresh it when needed?  Does the flavor/freshness of the revived bread still beat store bought bread?  Thanks for all of the help, and I look forward to learning with everyone here.

Hi, im relatively new to the world of home baking, done a couple batches of bagels so far, and my 1st loaf of enriched wheat bread is in the oven as I type this, im stoked as halfway through the baking, its looking great! i was happy to find a community site for bakers as well!!