Has anyone tried the Pure Komachi 2 knives?

I love their original tomato knife and the bread knife is stellar, or would be if it were an inch or so longer.

The series 2 knives look even tackier than the originals & are about half the price. I was wondering whether the quality has changed.

Patsy

Hey everybody!

I just wanted to drop in and remind everyone about a feature we have here on The Fresh Loaf to help keep the site running smoothly.

Since our site has become so active with so many members, it's also a prime target for folks wanting to make a buck who drop in to put their links and advertisemens disguised as posts. A lot of these get caught by various spam-protection measures that Floyd installed to keep the boards focused on community concerns, but every day we get a bunch of clever spammers who create accounts and make fakey looking posts with links to their business websites sneaked in (probably to get their page rankings to show up higher in Google). These posts have been increasing in number as our site gets more popular.

I spend each day scouring the message boards to clear these out and ban those accounts, but wanted to remind folks that you can help with this too, particularly with our star spam-reporting member going abroad for a while.  Sometimes these posts are obvious like a whole blog post about something random like golfing, with some words being links to whatever website they are pushing, and sometimes the posts are comments like "wow great" and then there's some totally unrelated link that has nothing to do with bread baking at all.

Sometimes when I find the posts they have comments with people asking what the spammer was doing on our site - you guys can help us out a lot if you run across these things by getting them into our spam-cue. You can do this by clicking the link at the bottom of the offending post or comment that says "Flag as offensive" (It turns out changing the wording of this link is far more complicated than we have time to deal with right now - I do wish it said something more obvious like "report to admin" or something!)

Also, I wanted to let you know that Floyd has been working on some behind-the-scenes fixes, in addition to the regular  performance code and keeping things updated and such, he has also been trying to figure out the email notification issues we've been having (the code of that module appears to have been written by someone whose primary language is not English, so it's been particularly tough to troubleshoot that one). He's also been working on getting our most active members some benefits like not having as much spam filtering blocks to deal with. Oh, and I think he's found a better module for those email notification functions which will work a bit nicer than having to manage so many "subscriptions", and that will hopefully clear up some of the weird timing issues we've been seeing on those notifications as well. Hopefully we'll find some time to get that installed for you guys soon, and I'm sure Floyd will make an announcement when things are ready to launch for you here.

And with that, I return you to your kitchens, and wish you all happy baking!

A handful of times a year I abuse my privileges as site administrator and make a post about my favorite charity-- which also happens to be my employer.  I hope community members do not mind too much.  -F

A project I've been working on for months and dreaming of for even longer is launching on MercyCorps.org today (well, soft launching... a wider public launch will happen next week).  Today we are introducing a feature we're calling "personalized fundraising pages" that will let anyone with a website or blog or event set up their own customized page on Mercycorps.org. 

Here is my fundraising page.

Our hope is that this tool will empower donors and communities like The Fresh Loaf to quickly and easily raise money for causes they believe in.

If you have ten minutes please check it out and consider making a small gift to Mercy Corps.  I've set a goal of $1000 on my page, thinking that if one hundred members of The Fresh Loaf community each gave ten dollars it would be a powerful demonstration of the strength of our community.

If you are unfamiliar with Mercy Corps, please take a look around the Mercy Corps website to learn more about us.  As I've mentioned previously, I was a Mercy Corps supporter and fan for many years before I found a job there. Working there has only deepened my belief that they are committed to improving the lives of people in some of the world's toughest places-- including many that don't typically make the news headlines like CAR, Tajikistan, and Niger-- and to being efficient stewards of their donors' money.  Your show of support would mean a great deal to me.

-Floyd

Update 10/23/2009: In less than 48 hours we've raised over 600 dollars.  Most impressive to me is that this isn't because of one or two large individual donations bumping up the total.  Rather it has been sheer number of community members who have stepped forward and made a contribution.

As I mentioned in my comments below, as soon as I posted this I thought perhaps I was being presumptuous setting a $1,000 goal.  But seeing that we've gotten nearly 2/3rds of the way there in less than 48 hours, I think we can do it... if not today, then by the end of this weekend.  So if you haven't made a donati0n through this page and can afford to, please do!  Even a 10 dollar donation is enough to provide a pile of a blankets to a family whose home was destroyed in the recent earthquake near Padang, Indonesia, or $15  provides an emergency supplies kit to a displaced family in Pakistan.  Little gifts make a difference too.

Update 10/24/2009:  Only $65 to go!  Who will step forward and push us over the top?!?

Update 10/24/2009 8 PM Pacific Time: We made it!  Thank you, everyone.

I swear that soon I will just give up scoring forever...sigh.....last week my slashing didn't work well because the tops of the loaves were getting dry during the second rise. Today I used plastic shower caps over my rising bowls and it worked just perfectly, loaves high as the sky, nice and moist dough on top. Until I slashed them and they all deflated. I used a super sharp, brand new Calphalon serrated knife on one loaf, and a new lame on the other. I slashed quick and sure and the loaves went down like balloons. What else can I try other than just giving up? Thanks :)

What is liquid lecithin and where do I find it?

I would like to purchase a book on sour dough bread making for a friend who is a novice. What would be a good basic book to learn about making sour dough breads?

Hey everyone!

I´m flying to the States tomorrow from Spain. I´ve got my sourdough bathed in olive oil, in a honey pot.

I was wondering if it would be a good idea to try and get it over the border? Would I put it in my check in baggage, or in carryon? I would have to declare it, right?

Does anyone here have experience?

I was thinking this morning of all the lovely gift breads I could send to friends and family......Then, the realization that homemade bread "usually", for me, starts losing quality greatly the next day. Have any of you had success with shipping breads in the mail? Thank you

Hi,

After my first rise, I have been punching the dough down or kneading a bit and then dividing it as best I can into two pieces before doing the final shaping and then placing in two loaf pans.  Normally one loaf is noticeably bigger than the other.  I know I need to get a scale, and will, but once I have that scale, if I need to remove small pieces of dough from one pile and add them to the other to get the two to be equal, then is there a trick to integrating the small bits of dough into the larger piece of dough?  Thanks in advance for advice!

I have tried proofing my loaf bread 3 different ways...on the countertop and covered with a floursack towel, in my oven (not on) and covered in same towel, and proofing in my expensive Excaliber Dehydrator that I quickly discovered never gets used for anything, but it does have a bread proofing setting.

Whatever I do, my dough turns dry and tough where it reaches the air and slashing properly is impossible. The dough just tears everywhere. Today I tried spritzing the top of the loaf with water before slashing and it didn't help. Can someone please tell me how to keep that top moist for perfect slashing? Thank you