With floydm's assistance, I think I finally figured out how to post pictures.  Hope this one posts ok.  This recipe is courtesy of "Artisan Breads" featuring Kossar's Onion Bialy's.  Thanks Floyd for your help.

I found a link to some neat instructional type videos on a number of shaping techniques so I did a search to see if it was already linked somewhere on this site but I didn't find any quickly so here it is:

http://www.fornobravo.com/video/hearth_bread.html

 demegrad

http://www.demegrad.blogspot.com/ 

Hi everyone, I teach bread-making classes, and have really enjoyed making Pain a L'Ancienne.  The flavor and texture is like nothing I've ever tasted.  How long have you found to be the best rising time after shaping/before baking for the biggest holes?  In Reinhart's book, he gives no rising time - it sounds like anytime after you shape the baguettes up to an hour later?  Let me know, any of you out there with experience.  Thanks & Kind regards 

This is the Flax Seed Wheat Bread from Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf (a great book, but one not easy to find in the US).

Recipe for the Flax Seed

Please share your experiences or experiments working with your favorite whole grain recipes.  What are your flour percentages, grain content and recipes for your favorite breads? I started baking sour dough wheat and rye breads and would like to try baking with multiple whole grains.

Can anyone help me with the correct way to use the Magic Mill DLX to knead?  When researching to buy it, it was touted at closest to hand kneading when using the roller and scraper. For me, the dough just sticks to the roller and spins around with it. No kneadinig goes on at all! I've contacted Magic Mill and they say for under 8 cups of flour to use the dough hook, but all of their literature and everything on line says the opposite. I don't know how to use this $500 machine and it was a waste of my money. Can anyone give me some advice to stop the dough from just spinning with the roller? I'd appreciate it. Alternatively, anybody want to buy a virtually unused Magic Mill DLX 2000???? :-))

I have read so many pieces about this bakery or that where they say this oven makes so many batches over a certain period or this bakery holds the record for consecutive batches...

So, having not been trained by a school or a professional baker, how big is a batch? Is it 2, 10, 20 or what? For me 10 loaves in a row at 2 pounds each was a great workout kneading but the time really flies when you are having that much fun!

Happy baking!

My favorite local-to-me bakery is Hungry Ghost Bread on State Street in Northampton, MA. All their bread is made by hand with sourdough culture, organic flour and filtered water, and baked in a huge wood-fired oven. Well, made mostly by hand: there is a large and noisy dough mixer to bring together each 75-lb. batch of dough. From time to time there are dynamite cookies and pastry goods in addition to a variety of excellent bread.

Some photos and a write-up from the fall of 2005 is available at http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/massachusetts/articles/2005/09/21/it_takes_a_village_baker/ . Hungry Ghost is an interesting place to hang out briefly whole choosing which bread to buy. There's often John Coltrane of Bob Dylan music filling the space, and the weekly bread schedule usually has a poem by lead baker Jonathan Stevens printed on the back. Stevens and Cheryl Maffei are the proprietors, ever-ready to explain their wares or comment on the passing scene.

Harold's Bread ®, Bakery - Chuck Wagon
F o o d S e r v i c e And/Or B r e a d P r i c i n g F o r m u l a s
by Harold B. Camara

STEP 1:
B r e a d P r i c i n g F o r m u l a

Price (COST OUT) Your Foods (Baked Goods) Products (i.e.: COSTING).
Scientifically compute the exact cost of all:

Ingredients
Containers (Bread Bags, Labels etc.)
Wrappers
Shipping or delivery, plus an estimate of the
Utilities (gas, electricity). Then, add your
Labor (what it would cost to hire someone to do the job). 

STEP 2:
COSTING FORMULA:
Establish Your Wholesale Food Price(s).
After you have established "Costed-out" (computed) your food cost (STEP 1 above) Add the total cost of your baked goods (foods) and then DOUBLE The Result.

Fired up the oven today for the first time this year, and the first time since late october. I had imagined baking on a wintery January day, but as it happened, we had record highs of nearly 50 degrees (in wisconsin) so it wasn't that much colder than the last time. Today's breads: Ciabatta and the Columbia French bread

I started the columbia dough (which has a 3-5 hour first proof) at 9:30, and lit the fire at 10:15. Ciabatta dough followed after that. I let the fire start to burn down around 3:30, and shoveled out the coals by about 4:00. This is a little longer than I usually go, but I wasn't sure if the cooler weather would effect things or not. Turns out I had PLENTY of heat, so I did overdo it a little. Fortunately with a cool kitchen and 2 slow-rising doughs, I wasn't in a rush. After cleaning out the coals and "soaking" the oven with the door shut for a half hour or so, the oven was a lovely 550 degrees. I put the ciabattas in, and they were done in 10 minutes. Turns out I should have left them in a little longer, they look great but softened up a bit after cooling--so the crust is not as crunchy as I normally like: