Hello from the Deep South, US
I've been reading the The Fresh Loaf for some time. I'm finally in a position to feed my obsession for bread making as I am now retired.
In the 1980's, I made bread as a part-time job. I was renting a 2nd Floor apartment in Wheeling, WV above a cafe and an old-school health food market. It was owned by 2 nuclear physicists who "retired" to WV, purchased a goat farm, and started the cafe and market.....When the "we are hiring" sign went up, I jumped on the opportunity. I was very poor and needed extra cash desperately.
Those ladies taught me how to make bread----and that's all I did for them from 2am to 7am seven days a week. I became quite the expert, making yeast breads and the various sponge breads for their sandwiches and loaves for sale in the cafe and market.
I was able to duplicate those results in my own kitchens as long as I lived in WV.
Then I moved to the Deep South, and my previous methods of breadmaking were complete failures here.....What I didn't learn in those WV days were the finer points of temperature, humidity, elevation, etc. The ladies had already figured that out and I never questioned it.
So, here I am reading everything I can.
With a couple dozen utter failures under my belt, I am now able to duplicate beautiful results with potato rolls and Pain de Mie. Sourdough is still a near complete failure, except I make outstanding flat breads with sourdough discards.
As I write, I am developing a Biga for Ciabatta. It's looking pretty good---starting to dome and smells like heaven.
I will post results later--good or bad.
Regards, Carol Cuevas