welcome from buckeye-land
so this is my first posting, after a year almost of lurking. but the q/a with peter reinharz spurred me on, since i own almost all of his books, including the most recent.
like many here, i've been an avid bread-baker for over 35 years. my collection includes the original Tassajara brown cover copy, now in tatters; laurel's bread book, julia child, dan leader, glazer, hammelman (a personal favorite) and many others. i've been through the whole-grain stage, lived through 2 zoji breadmakers (used for mixing dough & proofing, not baking) was educated by my 2 kids to abandon whole grains in favor of artisan breads and foccaccia, but never gave up the attempt to sneak wheatgerm and whole grains into the recipes/formulas in the newer books. so i was truly excited to see the new books by reinharz and leader.
but being a bit math-phobic, i've never fully worked out the 'percentage' way of baking, and have rewritten most formulas so that i can work them out intuitively. My version of ciabatte is literally a cut/paste of 3 different versions, with sourdough added, much in the tradition of some of the forum entries here. and i am quite excited to see the q/a with reinharz, and hope lots of questions are asked.
i've been trying out some of the new reinhartz recipes, but using my sourdough starter instead of the biga, and they seem to be working quite well. almost a throw-back to the original methods in tassajara, interestingly enough; i guess there are only so many ways to prepare dough.