new to the site, and new to baking bread.

I took a shot at lesson # 2 and here is my outcome.

Mike

Hi I am a Brit in Germany. although I love German bread I often make my own pizza bases from scratch and I dream of building a wood oven in adobe next year.

I bake loaves too but they tend to be very dull. I need your help here.

Quick question: the Bible here looks brilliant. Is there a possibility of sticking it to gether into one big PDF to print and read on paper?

Greetings from Canada.

I just started making bread about 2 days ago actually, and after a fairly successful attempt, I decided to keep going with it. I'm not usually someone who makes food, but I do ocassionally like to make something for my family and myself. Don't really know what else to say, but I hope that through this site, I'll be able to improve my bread-making skills (and hopefully having a bunch of my questions answered) and meet lots of new people as well.

Hey Everyone!!
I just joined this site and cant wait to start reading!! I started 2 years ago selling made from scratch baked goods at local farmers markets and still enjoy it but have recently decided to open in our little town. I do lease a fully licensed bakery kitchen and started venturing into the "artisan bread" avenue. I have a great book called the crust and crumb and so far have only made 3 of the recipes but they are just fantastic!!
My hubby and I own and operate an organic farm and also sell some heirloom veggies and my baked goods at a farmstand on our property, oh we live in beautiful southwest michigan.
Well off to read all about you now!
Have a great day yall!!
http://chickenscratchfarm.blogspot.com

Hello everyone,

After lurking (and learning) on this wonderful site for nearly two months, I thought it was about time I introduced myself.

Since retiring late last year, it has been great to have the time to re-explore different avenues of cooking/baking.

My mother used to often bake our family bread, and I recall the lovely smell, and the warmth of the kitchen with its solid fuel cooker, just the place to be on a cold winters day. We lived in cooler climes then.

My family moved to Brisbane Australia about 20 years ago. With it's sub-tropical climate No need for solid fuel cookers here....

Back to the cooking/baking. After determining that I could still produce a fairly good array of cookies cakes, pies etc, I was looking for a challenge. Never having previously baked a single loaf of bread, decided to give it a go, and was soon hooked.

Unfortunately we don't have a lot of choice of bread flours in our area and my first attempts, although edible, were nothing to write home about. I determined that the main problem was the lower gluten content of the available flours and am now getting better results with the addition of Vital wheat gluten.

Another pitfall for we novices, is volume versus weights, and the difference in cup sizes. Australia,as far as I know, has the only TBS that is equivalent to 4 teaspoons. To confound matters even further..many of the measuring cups and spoons available seem to be a variety of US and Australian measures...Just as well I like maths, and have a good digital scale..

In my repetoire I can now count, a White sandwich loaf, French baguettes, lovely Italian Scali bread, a tasty Cinnamon and raisin loaf, Monkey bread, and yes the ubiquitous No knead bread.

Yesterday I baked Susan's 63% Sourdough. My starter which is now 7 weeks old seems to be perky and strong and made a good looking loaf with great oven spring. I may have to tweak my ingredienta a bit though as although tasty and perfectly edible, the cumb was not as soft as I would have liked.

I am looking forward to my grand daughters coming to stay during the next school vacation. Aged 10 and 12, they love to cook with me and are excited about learning to bake bread.

Thanks to all of the members who are so helpful, and contribute so many invaluable tips, which enables we novices, to confidently try something new, knowing that help is only a keyboard stroke away.

Warm Regards to you all,

Margie

Hi everyone, 

    I'm fairly new at this, and don't have many recipes to share as yet.  I'm still working through the basics- I'm one of those ppl who like to master the foundations before getting fancy.

So currently I'm working on mastering pizza crust... like this guy :Jeff Varasano's NY Pizza Recipe  .  Although I'm not brave enough to cut the safety interlock off my oven's cleaning cycle lol. 

    I rather think I'm going to go with the dual baking stone concept to make a mini intense convection oven inside my conventional electric oven.  Looking on craigslist, I was able to spot some Pampered C's baking stones for sale cheap... though I have not gotten them yet. And I need a pizza peel... ah, the challenge of low-to-no budget baking...

    One thing I found very interesting is Mr. Varasano's description of what he terms "poolish"... he reccomends starting with a commercial (mail-order) sourdough Italian culture.  Has anyone here had experience in this area?  Has anyone in my area come up with a sourdough culture they would share a cup of?  I'm not sure of what would germinate in my kitchen, but pretty sure it woud be something odd.  I'm in Baltimore, MD btw.

thanks in advance!

A day or three ago I read a message from someone who asked, very reasonably, why make bread from scratch when it's possible to turn out bread from prepared mixes at  lower cost and which rise every time. They're good questions and they're ones we may all have asked at some previous time.

 My reasons are that I can now make bread with a better taste and texture doing it from scratch. My loaves stay fresh (this is Tuesday evening and I've just eaten some of the bread I made last Thursday morning) and have a great taste. But, more than that, I'm persuaded that modern "factory Bread" is not something I want to eat or to dose my family with. (I include pre-packed mixes in that exclusion.)

I encourage anyone interested in this topic to go to http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-shocking-truth-about-bread-413156.html and http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=471 for two articles which, although based on the views and research of one highly successful baker, are sufficiently different that it's worth reading and printing out both of them.

I'm sorry to have misplaced the original post but hope the poster may come across this reply.

Sojourner

What follows is a likely, yet entirely hypothetical future.

I have been an underemployed and unemployed financial research editor since early December. I live in one of the most economically depressed areas in the country (Ohio). For the most part, all I have done since getting laid off from my job at a think tank is cook and bake. Given the enjoyment I've had and the lack of other opportunity here, I have made the decision to attend bread school, most likely the Art of International Bread Baking program at the FCI in Manhattan, which is convenient to my budget (barely) and schedule (very).

I'm hoping to accomplish the following:

1. Learn to actually make something, unlike in my fomer career as a desk jockey.
2. Have a true career to fall back on should the economy collapse further.
3. Make and eat a LOT of awesome bread.
4. Do something I actually enjoy.
5. Do something that makes others happy.
6. Wear shorts and a t-shirt to work at 2:00 am.
7. Get the hell out of Ohio.
8. Open my own bakery after some period of apprenticeship.

If everything works out and I begin this fall, I will be blogging and photographing the entirety of the experience. I was just wondering if the readership of TFL would be interested in following me through the program and a new career as a professional baker.

What would the readership of TFL like to know about the experience?  I really feel that this would be a great opportunity to share with such an involved community of bread heads and the blogging would be mostly for you, not me. Unless, of course, someone would like to pay me for it :) Obviously, I can share techniques, recipes, tricks, and anecdotes, but is there anything you would like to know specifically?

Corey

Hello everyone,

I am new to the site (even though in the past few days I have managed to benefit hugely by your collective wisdom) and would like to introduce myself.  My name is Yulika, I am originally from Latvia, where as a teenager I used to bake pastries for my family every weekend.  I came to the US in 1993, first living in South Florida and then moving to Boston, MA, where I live now.  I have been baking bread for the past couple of years whenever mood would strike, mostly in winter time, to warm up the house and to feel cozy with the wonderful bread aroma.  Mostly I was buying freshly baked bread from many excellent local bakeries,  However, my toddler son has been diagnosed with allergy to nuts a couple of month ago, which means that we can no longer buy from bakeries, because there could be a stray nut stuck somewhere.  I decided to learn to bake different types of bread well so that my son growing up would know and appreciate the taste of good bread.  I have been reading a lot of books on breads, as well as threads on this website, and finally produced a perfectly presentable loaf of 100% whole wheat buttermilk (organic, nut-free) bread yesterday.  It was the first time that my bread had major oven spring, it was soft and crusty, and I was so excited!  I have toddler twins and 3-months old baby, so baking can be challenging as I need to keep track of them and take care of them, and their timing can be even less flexible than the dough's!  Nevertheless, I enjoy baking immensely and my family loves the results.  I am looking forward to learning much more here and becoming a member of this community.

When I take my baked loaves out of the oven, the crust is crisp. (I even had a loaf sing - for the first time! - yesterday). But soon after, say in 1.5 to 2 hours, the crust becomes significantly less crisp, almost loses it completely. And sometimes the crust softens so much that it wrinkles etc. Is there a way to keep the crust crisp for longer? (I'm mostly baking batards, under a foil pan for 30% of the total bake time, and I spray water on the insides of the foil pan. I sometimes mist water on the surface of the loaf too, sometimes not).