While the current handbook organization is fine for beginning-to-end reading, it's kinda hard to locate just one specific item of interest. I use books both ways ("all the way through" and "read a particular chapter"), and I wish I could more easily use the handbook both ways too. For example, I knew David's treatise on scoring was in the handbook somewhere. Even so, it took me several rather frustrating minutes to locate it.

Here's a couple ideas I think would have helped me find that material:

First, can the Tables of Contents be multi-level rather than just single-level? From the topmost TOC, I'd like to at least be able to figure out the best route down to any item of interest. Currently I have to "guess" (too often wrongly) which chapter the item I want is under. If the fully detailed TOC looks too intimidating, it might work to instead fully display only two levels and for everything further down just list all the titles on a single line. The additional levels of items don't even need to be clickable (although they might be); all that's important to me is to know they exist and know what to click to reach them without backtracking.

And second, what about enhancing the "search" functionality to specifically find items in the handbook?  Maybe each result could just be distinctively marked (different color? different font?) if it's in the handbook. OR maybe all handbook results could be pulled out and displayed either in a completely separate section or at the top before any other results. OR maybe it could be a checkbox next to the search button.

(I've no idea how easy or hard it would be to implement any of these things, and I apologize in advance if these ideas are "obviously ridiculous" to those more in the know:-)

For us non-French speakers, how about posting a pronunciation guide for all the french terms that crop up so often in the bread world?

We spent mucho dinero sending Daughter Number One, who had a minor in French, for all that fancy book larnin' (even a semester in Paris!), but every time we ask her what a French word means, or how to pronounce it, she just shrugs! ;-(

ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA

Having just gotten back from three months of traveling away from my sourdough starter, I was thrilled to find the Handbook on TFL.  It is great!  I was able to browse through the different sections refreshing my memory on bread baking.  I feel the Handbook will be a wonderful resource for newbies as well as those of us with a few loaves of bread under our belts (or over).

Congratulations to all those who were/are involved.

Sourdough

Alaska

I Just finished reading most of the handbook and I think it's great. The subject of the bakers math always gets my eyes rolling. I think I may be getting it soon. What I really want to know and can't find it anywhere is how to figure out the % of protien from the amts given on the flour bag. I know the the bread flour I like has 5 grams of protein per 1/4 cup of flour. This by the way is Stoneburr unbleached white bread flour. Any of the other bread flours only have 4. How do I convert this # to a %? Every time I ask at Bob's redmill what their unbleached white is they always give me a different answer so I know the folks who work there do not know. They always tell me it's the highest  in the industry but the protein content is 4 per 1/2 cup. This would be a good topic for the handbook. I know you can make it simple. Thanks all.

The discussion on baking vocabulary has gotten me to thinking...

It has also gotten me to combing through my vast collection of old bread recipes and I've found some interesting things.

For example, in the Ingredients section there is a confident statement that active dry yeast must be "proofed" in water before using it in a bread formula.

Well, we did that in 1950 and even in 1970, yet, I find that at least by 1981 no less of an authority than the Fleishman's Yeast company has us dispense with that step for active dry yeast (there was no other kind of dry yeast back then, Rapid Rise was not fully developed until 1984) and mix it directly into the flour.

I've already gone down the rabbit hole with the term "proof" so I will take my medication and calm down about that.

Not bringing this up to be a know it all, but I know that you are trying to be an accurate source for serious or beginning home bakers and what has happened is that there is now one more source on the "inter web" that tells us baking folklore that really isn't true.

The definition of autolyse follows the same vein.  It is good for what it is, but it is not defintive as it does not deal with the very real question of adding or not adding pre-ferments.

My advanced age and long years of home baking perhaps give me a different perspective.

Is there some kind of peer review process to which handbook entries will be subject?  Is this the means?

I'm glad to put some of my time and effort into doing this.  Perhaps you could have definitions and explanations but have sidebars containing "controversy and additional discussion."  Just a random thought.

Let me know how I can be of help.

Thanks

Pat

There has been discussion of having a Handbook "chapter" on rye baking. Given the current outline, it seems more appropriate to have sections on rye in several places - ingredients, methods, recipes, etc.

So, I created this topic as a place to discuss material pertaining to rye that should be in the Handbook.

David

At long last, there is a project afoot to develop a Fresh Loaf Handbook.

The idea behind the Handbook is to distill the baking wisdom of The Fresh Loaf community into a compact, well-organized, accessible document.

I've been thinking of it as "an Open Source Bread Baker's Apprentice" or "a bread baker's version of Wikipedia." Not that we want to compete with or replace either of those resources, but we can better serve new bakers searching for information on how to get started baking artisan breads if we take the time to organize our thoughts into something more accessible than the constant stream posts typically featured here (which I love and don't want to change... It just would be useful for the site to also have something more stable to compliment it).

Take a look at what is in the Handbook already. Jeff (JMonkey) combined content from The Fresh Loaf with his own research and knowledge and put together a baking book for his friends and family this Christmas.  Much of his work is already in Section II and Section III of the handbook.   You'll also see David Snyder's wonderful tutorial on scoring, which he was kind enough to let me reproduce in the handbook.

Frequently Asked Questions about The Fresh Loaf Handbook

(Well, maybe not frequently asked questions yet, but questions I anticipate people asking about the Handbook.)

How does the Handbook differ from the rest of the site?

The handbook pages can be edited by more than one community member, so each page should get cleaner and more accurate as time goes on.  There also will not be comments on the handbook pages.  The ideal is to keep things in the handbook tight and concise.   A separate forum has be created for discussion of the Handbook.

What should go into the Handbook?

The community will have to figure that out.

I suggest that we start with the basics: basic information about the process, the ingredients, and the techniques involved in artisan baking. Something like 30-50 standard recipes would also make sense.

In my mind the goal of the Handbook is not to be exhaustive. Rather it is to provide something that an enthusiastic new baker could sit down and read in one evening and, upon completion, feel excited and well-prepared to start baking artisan breads.  But, as I said, as a community-authored document, the community will have to determine what purpose the Handbook serves.

What about the tone of the Handbook?

The tone of the Handbook should be friendly, encouraging, much like the tone usually found on this site. Once we have the basics covered, I suspect we'll want to add sections or essays for advanced bakers on "Advanced Topics" or "Eye-Opening Techniques." In those I suspect we'll want to allow more leeway for individual voice and stronger opinions, but the basic sections should remain encouraging and author-neutral.  At least that is my opinion.

What kind of license is the Handbook being developed under?

The Handbook is being developed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License, which is a commonly used license on websites like Flickr.

So what does that mean?

It means that you are free to reproduce and modify any images or text included in the Handbook for non-commercial or educational use as long as you include a credit with the source listed as "The Fresh Loaf (http://www.thefreshloaf.com)". You may alter, transform, or build upon the Handbook to create your own work, but you must distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

So if I contribute something to the handbook, does that mean I'm giving up my exclusive ownership of that content?

Yes.

If you contribute something to the handbook you are giving up exclusive ownership of it and allowing the community and others to build upon or alter it. And you are granting me or whomever else might own The Fresh Loaf in the future the right to grant permission to a newspaper, magazine, or publisher to reproduce your content in a commercial setting if they ask for permission and it seems appropriate.

(The previous clause is in here because it wouldn't be feasible for me to try to track down every person who had ever contributed to a page any time there was a request to reproduce a recipe in a local newspaper. But recall that you too will have full permission to reproduce or build upon any content from the Handbook for projects of your own, like Jeff's Bread Book.  The goal of the Creative Commons License is to encourage knowledge sharing and to allow the content to continue being adapted for years to come in ways the original author cannot begin to imagine, not to make anyone rich.)

I have a favorite recipe from Reinhart/Hamelman/Beranbaum's book. Can we put it in the Handbook?

No, we should not, since we do not have the right to release them under the Creative Commons License.

Many of us use recipes that originated  from books but which we've baked often enough that we've "made them our own" by modified them to better fit our taste, the ingredients available to us, or by combining something we learned from one source with a technique we learned from another.  These recipes, the ones that are distinctly "our own," seem to me to be the best candidates for the Handbook.  But even in these cases, we should try to give credit to the author of the original recipe.  As I said earlier, I don't imagine the Handbook replacing The Bread Baker's Apprentice or The Bread Bible, only offering an accessible entry point into the art of bread baking. Hopefully at the end of reading it, the new baker will want to continue to learn more and have a good idea of which author is likely to provide them with the type of information they seek.

This sounds great!  How do I get involved in the Handbook project?

A few long-time members-- Jeff (JMonkey), Eric (EHanner), and David (DMSnyder)-- have already been given access to the Handbook.  They can add new pages into the Handbook and edit existing Handbook pages.  I think they can add new subsections and change the order of Handbook pages too, though I'm not certain we've tested that yet.

If you'd like to get involved in working on the Handbook, Please post a comment in this thread, in the Handbook forum, send me a private message, or send an email to floydm at thefreshloaf dot com.  This is a volunteer effort and we're all new at this, so we may not approve access for everyone all at once, but as things ramp up we will continue to grant access to more and more community members.