Greetings from NE TN
Hi TFL!
Nearly anytime I Google bread questions, it leads me here. I have found lots of good information here and really enjoy the forum.
About me: I've been baking bread for about 15 months now, which is also how long I've been married. You'll see the two are connected. My now wife had checked PR's 'Artisan Bread Everyday' out from the library about 6 times and finally bought a copy. She was so nervous making the first recipe and we were amazed how good the bread was. She made bread a few more times and I was hooked on eating eat bread, although not yet baking. A few loaves later, we got married. ;)
Shortly after that, she went to a music festival for a few days. I was so distraught by the lack of bread, I decided to try baking some myself. Although a life long cook, I'd always thought baking would be too hard to master. I've never been much for recipes and thought that would make baking impossible. Fortunately we'd bought a cheap kitchen scale (now one of the bane's of my baking existence) so the measuring was much easier than I thought it would be. Well, by the time she got home from Bonnaroo, I'd already started my first starter!
Fast forward to now and I can say I'm lucky enough to be baking, well, let's just say a lot of bread. Or at least a lot of bread for a home baker. We have our home kitchen certified as a food manufacturing facility for non-hazardous products, although that is no longer required in TN. I keep three seperate cultures, white, rye, and whole wheat, but they all originally came from the same white starter. I have started getting flour from Lindley Mill in NC because I was having a hard time finding flour closer to me. It's about 4 hrs ea way and this is my second trip in about a month. I think i got just under 1000lbs last time and am getting slightly more tomorrow. I just looked at the 'pantry' and i've only got 6 sealed 25 lb bags left. My wife and I talk about how i couldn't believe I'd ever use the first 50lb bag of King Arthur I brought home.
Hopefully this makes some of you feel better about your obsessions with bread. I'm looking forward to having some time to experiment with new recipes and finally getting Hammelman's Bread book.
