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I almost decided not to bake this past weekend, but I activated some starter, thinking I might make some sourdough pancakes for breakfast Sunday. But, then, there was this starter, and I thought maybe I'd bake something or other. Well, I might as well have some fresh-baked bread for Sunday dinner, and it had been a while since I'd given a loaf to my next door neighbor who really appreciates my breads. I guessed I'd make some San Francisco-style sourdough to share.

Ok, so I am not a blogger, and I am not a joiner.

So you may well ask 'What are you doing here?'

My answer is simple.
1. My husband sent me the link to this site last year in October for the Pierre Nury Light Rye and asked me to make it, so I did, with fabulous results. Ever since then I have been lurking around, and tried about 5 recipes. All of them worked well. I have also shared this site with a few friends, fellow bread enthusiasts, and all comments are great. So why not join the fray and add my appreciation!

I didn't plan to start this year with a bread I'm not very proud of... but a lot of things happened lately (good things!) and I can't write here as often as I would like.

In February I held a workshop here in town, with 30 participants, a introduction to sourdough bread very well received.  You can see pictures here (click for link) and a video (sorry, no English subtitles) here (click for link).

Cat and I spent the week of 3/3 through 3/10 on an expedition on the waters and islands around Southern Baja California.  It was a glorious trip, with great up-close encounters with marine mammals and other local fauna.

My camera was busy trying to capture some sense of the wonderful natural world we experienced.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, Northumberland. UK.

18th March 2012

David Snyder and I were enjoying a conversation in his thread on his lovely baking of last weekend.   See here, there are 3 comments to read:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27810/last-weekends-breads#comment-208809

I'm a beginning baker. I started baking my own bread for a few reasons. One reason is that I like baking. I enjoy being able to produce something home-made. Another is that I hate spending $3-4 on a decent loaf of bread. I knew that I could learn to make good bread myself, given some time and effort. It would be cheaper, and taste better, than anything I could buy.

Hello --- and Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone :^)

I am going to my Mother's house for lunch tomorrow to visit with some of my relatives and wanted to bring some nice rolls for lunch.  I decided to start off with a basic Challah recipe and made some modifications to make it interesting.  I used durum semolina flour along with bread flour, spelt flour and barley flakes.  I also used some agave nectar instead of white sugar to add som

My daughter has a sorority sister in from CA staying with us this weekend and I wanted to make something she and my daughter  probably have never been fortunate to taste before.  This weeks ITJB bake is Babka so I thought I would give it a try - with a few twists and not just twisting the dough - which I also did.  This babka leans Polish but besides being leavened with minneola / apple yeast water,  in place of a coiled loaf - I used a Bundt pan.  In place of cake crumbs, I used a almond, vanilla, granola streusel.