Hello from les Laurentides!

Hey Folks,

I've been lurking here for quite a while looking for great information and thought during this Holiday Season that it would be a good idea to take the next step, join and perhaps contribute when I graduate to the level of talent I see here :-)

I've been making my own bread for two years now, for my wife and I and now supply my mother, family and friends as well, after moving up to a 20QT commercial mixer that I got for free broken down but was able to get back to operating condition ;-)

By trade I am a retired construction contractor and troubleshooter and by interest, an inveterate fixer upper. I'm the guy everyone calls when they can't find a technical solution to their problem and love fixing old machines.

I have concentrated on just one bread recipe that I have perfected over the past year and a half until I felt I understood the science and have finally got a good enough feel for the art to feel ready to expand and branch out into other types of breads and am now just about ready to explore!

My mainstay is a very simple, yet timeless bread made with plain baker's yeast but made from flour I make myself right before use on an old converted commercial coffee mill, using red spring wheat grown right here in Quebec in the Lac-Saint-Jean area. This gives my bread a taste I have not been able to find anywhere else from artisan bakeries, as all the bakers I've spoken to buy their flour and don't mill it themselves.

Originally, I am from a white bread tradition, being born in the Old Country before moving to Canada as a boy. My mother keeps saying that after thinking I was retarded for not speaking up for so long when I was a baby, my first intelligible expression was "Maman il faut que tu aille chez le boulanger chercher du pain". This should give you an idea of how important bread has been in my life!

Although I live day to day in English with my American Wife, I work mostly in French and so am almost perfectly bilingual, should anyone feel more comfortable communicating with me in the Langue de Félix Leclerc!

I live in a very small village in the Laurentians north of Montreal and my sister lives not far in another village and I go to Montreal quite often as my mother and my daughter both live there. I know there are folks here from my general area on this forum as I have read some of their posts, so I am particularly looking forward to read more about what you guys are doing these days!

Thank you all, Season's Greetings, looking forward to more soon :-)